Windham-Campbell, new Yale literary prize, honors three playwrights

The Windham-Campbell Prizes, a new literary award from Yale University, has announced its inaugural roster of winners. Among the nine recipients are three playwrights -- Naomi Wallace, Stephen Adly Guirgis and Tarell Alvin McCraney.

Each winner receives a monetary award of $150,000. The honors will be handed out at a ceremony scheduled for Sept. 10.

The prize is administered by the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale. It is named after Donald Windham, who along with his partner, Sandy M. Campbell, donated money for the creation of the prize.

The award is intended to honor writers of all ages and nationalities.

Guirgis’ plays include “The Mother... With the Hat,” which recently had its local debut at South Coast Repertory; “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot”; and “Jesus Hopped on the ‘A’ Train.”

The New York playwright has worked extensively with the Labyrinth Theater company.

Wallace is the writer of the recent “The Liquid Plain.” She has won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for female dramatists and the Horton Foote Prize.

McCraney is an award-winning dramatist whose works include “The Brother/Sister” trilogy of plays.

In addition to the drama category, the award has categories for fiction and nonfiction. The fiction winners are James Salter, Zoë Wicomb and Tom McCarthy; the nonfiction winners are Jonny Steinberg, Adina Hoffman and Jeremy Scahill.

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