Windham-Campbell Prizes announces new podcast series with Lit Hub

The Windham-Campbell Prizes has announced that a third season of its podcast will launch on 29th May as part of an ongoing partnership with literary website Lit Hub. 

Hosted by Mike Kelleher, director of the Windham-Campbell Prizes, each episode will feature a conversation with one of the winners about the books and plays they love. The first episode, featuring prize winner Hanif Abdurraqib, launches on 29th May, with a new episode released every two weeks.

The prizes recognise eight writers each year across four categories – fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama – each of whom receive an unrestricted cash prize of $175,000 (£138,000). The podcast series will comprise eight episodes, each featuring one of this year’s recipients. This year’s winners were Deirdre Madden and Kathryn Scanlan for fiction; Christina Sharpe and Hanif Abdurraqib for non-fiction; Christopher Chen and Sonya Kelly for drama; and M NourbeSe Philip and Jen Hadfield for poetry. 

In the first episode Abdurraqib discusses The Women of Brewster Place (published in the US by Penguin) by Gloria Naylor, which explores the lives and relationships of seven Black women, inspiring two television series and a stage musical adaptation. 

For the second episode Madden chooses Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (Faber), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. 

Chen selects the 20th-century Argentine short story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Jorge Luis Borges (translated by Andrew Hurley) to discuss in the third episode, which uses the vehicle of speculative fiction to explore philosophical themes. 

For episode four, Sharpe considers Counternarratives by John Keene, a collection of 13 short stories and novellas that counter, challenge or subvert established narratives about race and slavery in the history of the Americas, from the 17th century to today. 

Jen Hadfield discusses Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Canterbury Press Norwich), a personal narrative by Annie Dillard, who details her explorations near her home in Virginia and shares her meditations on nature and life, in the fifth show. 

For the sixth episode Kelly contemplates The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (HarperCollins), a memoir by French journalist Jean Dominique-Bauby (translated by Jeremy Leggett), reflecting on his life before and after experiencing locked-in syndrome due to a stroke. 

Scanlan considers Joe Gould’s Secret (Vintage) by Joseph Mitchell, about an eccentric writer in New York who represented both the bohemian and Beat generations, in the penultimate episode. 

For the final show, Philip selects Born to Slow Horses (published in the US by Wesleyan University Press), a series of poetic meditations on islands and exile by Barbadian poet and academic Kamau Brathwaite. 

The awards are administered by Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and nominees are considered by judges who remain anonymous before and after the announcement. Recipients must write in the English language and may live in any part of the world.