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'Brilliantly bold work' … author and poet Renee Gladman and translator Kate Briggs.
Renee Gladman and Kate Briggs. Composite: Josh Libatique / Sarah Tulej
Renee Gladman and Kate Briggs. Composite: Josh Libatique / Sarah Tulej

Translator Kate Briggs among this year's Windham-Campbell prize winners

This article is more than 3 years old

Briggs, whose book This Little Art focuses on the ‘strangenesses and paradoxes’ of translation, wins one of eight $165,000 grants aiming to give authors financial independence

The American author and poet Renee Gladman danced around the room when she learned she had been chosen as one of the recipients of the $165,000 (£120,000) Windham-Campbell prizes. Translator Kate Briggs, seeing an email from the prize’s director, thought she was going to be asked to present a prize; she had no expectation that $165,000 was shortly going to be hers.

One of the world’s richest literary awards, the Windham-Campbell prizes give an unrestricted grant of $165,000 to eight writers each year, celebrating “extraordinary literary achievement” by allowing them to “focus on their work independent of financial concerns”. This year’s recipients range from Briggs to the 85-year-old American memoirist Vivian Gornick. Organisers said the writers were all “pushing boundaries with brilliantly bold work, exploring deeply personal and political ideas around identity, race, sexuality and the immigrant experience”.

Briggs, who was born in the UK and now lives and teaches in Rotterdam, has published one book of her own, This Little Art, a mix of memoir and history about the art of literary translation, and has also translated writers including Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. She described herself as “astonished by the news” of her win.

“I got an email from the director of the prize, saying could we set up a phone call, and that he had some some great news,” she said. “At that point, I was thinking, well, it probably means something like they want me to present a prize, or translate something. I didn’t think it was really happening.”

The Windham-Campbell prize called This Little Art a “brilliant” book which “defies categorisation”, and “articulates and refracts the many strangenesses and paradoxes of translation as a practice and an art”. Briggs said she was very “conscious of the fact that I’m at the beginning of my writing and translating life”, and the prize “really didn’t feel like anything within the horizons of my expectations for my work”.

“Obviously the financial aspect is transformative, but also the recognition is deeply meaningful,” she said. “I’ve published one book under my own name, and translations, so to have it at this point where I feel like I’ve relatively recently come to think of myself as a writer in the full sense is a very powerful thing … I don’t expect to ever stop feeling astonished! Or grateful. It is the most unexpected gift of freedom and permission.”

Gladman, chosen for her “singular and vertiginous authorial intelligence, a fierce and careful attention to language, and a willingness to take formal and linguistic risks in form, language, and subject”, said she “needed to engage in an ecstatic dance” when she found out she had won. “I danced. With music, everywhere in the house,” she said. “It is electrifying to receive this level of support from one of the most prestigious institutions in the world, and an honour to be among this brilliant group of international writers – many of us are of colour, many of us are women.”

The former poet laureate of Toronto, Dionne Brand, said it would take her “weeks, maybe months to find the best words to describe my amazement” at being given the award. The prize praised in particular her novel Theory, which it said is “funny, wild, and completely lacking in pretension”, and “takes huge formal risks, reimagining the novel of ideas for our own moment, challenging and enchanting the reader at the same time”.

Poets Canisia Lubrin and Natalie Scenters-Zapico were also awarded grants, as were playwrights Michael R Jackson and Nathan Alan Davis. Lubrin, who was born and raised in Saint Lucia and now teaches at the University of Toronto, said it was “impossible to express what this extraordinary encouragement means, what being in such company during such a catastrophic time, will make possible”. Thanks to the Windham-Campbell prize, she said, “I will face the world and these alphabets tomorrow and the day after with renewed vigour.”

“Through original and intensely moving work that challenges what we think we know about genre and style, these extraordinary writers cast a forensic eye on the issues that make us human: our identity, our history, our cultural and political experiences,” said prize director Mike Kelleher. “We are incredibly proud to recognise and celebrate such exceptional literary talent.”

The prizes were dreamed up by partners Donald Windham and Sandy M Campbell, book lovers and collectors who had long discussed setting up an award highlighting literary achievement, and allowing writers to focus on their work. When Campbell died unexpectedly in 1988, Windham turned the dream into a reality, with the first prizes announced in 2013. Previous recipients include Bhanu Khapil, Tessa Hadley and Edmund de Waal.

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