The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast The Windham-Campbell Prizes

Percival Everett (winner of a 2023 Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction) joins Windham-Campbell Prize administrator Michael Kelleher for the last interview of the season, and it's a joyful exploration of Ralph Ellison's seminal novel Invisible Man, Everett's relationship to the book and its contemporaries, and the enduring power of a novel that makes you think.

Reading list: 
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison • Moby Dick by Herman Melville • "Box Seat" by Jean Toomer • If He Hollers, Let Him Go by Chester Himes • Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes • Native Son by Richard Wright • "(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue" by Louis Armstrong • The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler • Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

Percival Everett’s most recent books include Dr. No (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award) The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award), Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), So Much Blue, Erasure, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier. He has a poetry collection forthcoming with Red Hen Press. He has received the NBCC Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, and is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC.
The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast is a program of The Windham-Campbell Prizes, which are administered by Yale University Library's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Jasmine Lee-Jones (winner of a 2023 Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama) joins Windham-Campbell Prize administrator Michael Kelleher for a wide-ranging conversation about the incredible power of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, linking the work of Hansberry and Jordan Peele, and the power of dreams.
Reading List:


A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

August Wilson's Century Cycle


Get Out by Jordan Peele


Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson

"A Love Supreme" by John Coltrane


Beneatha's Place by Kwame Kwei-Armah


Jasmine Lee-Jones is a writer and performer. Jasmine was a writer-on-attachment for the 2016 Open Court Festival, and was further developed as a writer through the Royal Court’s Young Court programme. Her first play seven methods of killing kylie jenner (2019) was first commissioned as part of The Andrea Project and opened at the Royal Court in July 2019. In 2023, she became the youngest ever recipient of a Windham-Campbell Prize.

Susan Williams (winner of a 2023 Windham-Campbell Prize for Non-Fiction) joins Windham-Campbell Prizes director Michael Kelleher to talk about the majesty and the drudgery of Bleak House, walking through history in the present, and the complicated realities of Charles Dickens the human.
Reading List:


White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa by Susan Williams


David Copperfield by Charles Dickens


Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin


The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin


"Do They Know It's Christmas?" -- BandAid 1984


for a full episode transcript, click here.

Dr Susan Williams is a senior research fellow in the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her pathbreaking books include White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa; Who Killed Hammarskjöld?, which in 2015 triggered a new, ongoing UN investigation into the death of the UN Secretary-General; Spies in the Congo, which spotlights the link between US espionage in the Congo and the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945; Colour Bar, the story of Botswana’s founding president, which was made into the major 2016 film A United Kingdom; and The People’s King, which presents an original perspective on the abdication of Edward VIII and his marriage to Wallis Simpson.

dg nanouk okpik (winner of a 2023 Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry) joins Windham-Campbell Prizes director Michael Kelleher for a deep-dive into Layli Long Soldier's 2017 collection Whereas, examining the historical potency of poetry, the depth of an artistic friendship, and an appearance by a cat named Blue.
Reading List:


"Eyes of a Blue Dog" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez


Poet Warrior by Joy Harjo

S.J.Res.14


Blood Snow by dg nanouk okpik


For a full episode transcript, click here.

 
dg nanouk okpik is an Iñupiaq-Inuit poet from south-central Alaska. Her debut collection of poetry, Corpse Whale (2012), received the American Book Award (2013) and her 2022 collection Blow Snow was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been published in several anthologies, including New Poets of Native Nations (2018) and the forthcoming Infinite Constellations: An Anthology of Identity, Culture, and Speculative Conjunctions (2023). The recipient of the May Sarton Award for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2022), okpik lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she is a Lannan Foundation Fellow at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Dominique Morisseau joins Windham-Campbell Prizes director Michael Kelleher to talk about the still-resonant power of Pearl Cleage's What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, representing Black men on the page and onstage, the AIDS epidemic and COVID, and why the writers of Family Guy seem to hate Meg.
Reading List:

Idlewild, Michigan


for colored girls... by Ntozake Shange


The Color Purple by Alice Walker


Family Guy (1999-present)


Flyin' West and Other Plays by Pearl Cleage



For a full episode transcript, click here.

Dominique Morisseau has established herself as not only one of America’s preeminent dramatists but as a visionary force in the field of theater across the globe. Her body of work, including the hugely ambitious and critically acclaimed three-play cycle The Detroit Project (Skeleton Crew [2016], Paradise Blue [2015], and Detroit ’67 [2013]), is both deeply poetic and sharply philosophical, drawing upon the rich histories of Black American literature, music, and activism to create unflinching—and wildly entertaining—dramatic experiences. In the Detroit Project plays, as well as in standalone works like Confederates (2022), Pipeline (2017), and Blood at the Root (2014), Morisseau dramatizes the entanglement of art and politics with care, sophistication, and a fervent conviction. Morisseau also has made an impact as a leader in her artistic communities. Countless young writers name Morisseau as a key influence, and her perspectives on community-building, inclusion, and transparency have changed the culture of theater-making for the better. Her many accolades include, most recently, a Drama Desk Award (2019), a MacArthur Fellowship (2018), two Obie Awards (2018, 2016), and a Steinberg Playwright Award (2015). She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.

Ling Ma joins Windham-Campbell Prizes director Michael Kelleher to talk about tuning into the same frequency as Rachel Ingalls, crying on airplanes, and what it means to write about human-cryptid romance.
READING LIST:


Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls


Times Like These by Rachel Ingalls


The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum


The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)


Grumpy Old Men (1993)


For a full episode transcript, click here.

Ling Ma is a writer hailing from Fujian, Utah, and Kansas. She wrote the novel Severance and the story collection Bliss Montage, both published by FSG. Her work has received the Kirkus Prize, a Whiting Award, an NEA fellowship, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award. Both titles have been named to the NY Times Notable Books of the Year and her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Granta, and more. She has taught creative writing and English at Cornell University and the University of Chicago, where she currently serves as an assistant professor of practice. She lives in Chicago with her family.

The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast is a program of The Windham-Campbell Prizes, which are administered by Yale University Library's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.