Three Women Are Among the Inaugural Winners of the Windham Campbell Prizes

The nine inaugural winners of the Windham Campbell Prizes have been announced by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. The $150,000 prizes are awarded for outstanding achievement in fiction, nonfiction, and drama. The recipients will receive their awards at a ceremony in New Haven on September 10.

Among the nine inaugural winners of the Windham Campbell Prizes are three women.

Adina Hoffman is the author of House of Windows: Portraits From a Jerusalem Neighborhood and My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century, a biography of Taha Muhammad Ali. A graduate of Wesleyan University, she has served as a visiting professor at Middlebury College, New York University, Yale University, and Wesleyan University.

Naomi Wallace is a playwright from Kentucky. Among her plays are “In the Heart of America,” “Slaughter City,” and “One Flea Spare.” She has also written several screenplays. Wallace is a former MacArthur Fellow. A graduate of Hampshire College, Wallace holds two master’s degrees from the University of Iowa.

Zoe Wicomb is a South African writer who lives in Glasgow, Scotland, where she teaches at the University of Strathclyde. Wicomb is a graduate of the University of Western Cape. Among her novels are You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town, David’s Story, Playing in the Light, and The One That Got Away.