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Anne Enright, Rana Dasgupta and Roy Williams win Windham-Campbell Prizes, receiving £135,205 each
Anne Enright, Rana Dasgupta and Roy Williams are among the winners of the Windham-Campbell Prizes with eight authors awarded $175,000 (£135,205).
The awards aim to support eight writers’ work and allow them to focus on their creative practice independent of financial concerns, recognising literary achievement across four categories – fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama. With annual prize money exceeding $1.4m (£772,300), they are one of the most significant prizes in the world.
The 2025 recipients are:
Sigrid Nunez (United States) – fiction
Anne Enright (Ireland) – fiction
Patricia J Williams (United States) – nonfiction
Rana Dasgupta (United Kingdom) – nonfiction
Roy Williams (United Kingdom) – drama
Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini (United Kingdom) – drama
Anthony V Capildeo (Scotland/Trinidad and Tobago) – poetry
Tongo Eisen-Martin (United States) – poetry
The selection committee said of Enright’s recognition: “In her wide-ranging and wryly unsentimental fiction, Anne Enright explores the limitations and joys of our human need for belonging.”
British essayist Dasgupta won a prize in nonfiction “in recognition of his perceptive critique of global hypercapitalism, industrialisation, politics and class, as seen in his Orwell Prize and Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize shortlisted book Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First-Century Delhi (Canongate),” organisers said.
The selection committee said: “Rana Dasgupta captures contemporary capitalism’s visions and challenges with unflinching candor, and through delicately layered perspectives, allows his subjects to reveal themselves in a world of dissonances.”
British playwright Williams “has been rewarded for his undeniably essential oeuvre, through which he leverages an exquisite power of observation to create nuanced portrayals of race and class, today’s Britain, and how the simmering pressures of contemporary life can explode into unchecked hatred,” organisers said.
The selection committee added: “Roy Williams’ nuanced, multivocal portrayals of race and class lay bare uncomfortable truths about British identity, creating an essential and complex theatre of contemporary life.”
Michael Kelleher, director of the Windham-Campbell Prizes, said: “Each year, eight writers receive an unexpected call sharing the life-changing news that they have been awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize, offering $175,000 and with it the opportunity to create their work independent of financial concerns.
“It was the late Donald Windham’s wish in establishing these prizes to call attention to literary achievement and provide writers with time, space and freedom. This mission remains at the heart of the Windham-Campbell Prizes, and in today’s world it is more vital than ever to recognise and support the crucial work and wisdom that writers share with us all.”
