Anne Enright has been awarded the $175,000 (€160,000) Windham-Campbell Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards.
The selection committee of anonymous judges said: “In her wide-ranging and wryly unsentimental fiction, Anne Enright explores the limitations and joys of our human need for belonging.”
The Dublin writer said: “The sense of unreality has not left me since the news came in. I am floored by the Windham-Campbell Prize’s generosity and goodwill. I actually thought I was done, that I’ve had my turn. Then this dropped out of a clear blue sky and it still feels very unreal.
“In some ways the Windham-Campbell is a very American prize – it’s like something from the movies; dramatic, entirely philanthropic and full of faith in the role of the artist. Over the years, I realised the most enduring thing about [winning] the Rooney Prize was meeting the benefactors, Dan and Patricia Rooney. There was something steady and heartening about their good wishes for the young writer I was then, who considered herself at odds with the establishment.
“This prize was founded by Sandy Campbell and Donald Windham, both men also now deceased. They were life partners whose love for each other is commemorated in that hyphenation of the title. This is not an industry prize: I think that personal goodwill matters.”
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Enright, the first laureate for Irish fiction (2015-2018) and professor of creative writing at UCD since 2018, was born in Dublin in 1962 and lives in Dún Laoghaire. In her eight novels and two short-story collections, she has explored the family in startlingly potent domestic portraits. She won the Booker Prize in 2007 for The Gathering and other well-known works include The Green Road (2015), which won Irish Novel of the Year and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her debut collection, The Portable Virgin, won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 1991. What Are You Like? won the Encore Award in 2001.
She studied English and philosophy at Trinity College Dublin, then did a master’s in creative writing at the University of East Anglia under Angela Carter and Malcolm Bradbury. She was a television producer and director for RTÉ for six years, including four years on Nighthawks.
The Windham-Campbell is a remarkably generous prize, worth three times the Booker. Writing is a notoriously precarious and for most an impecunious profession. Did it unsettle Enright to suddenly come into such a small fortune?
“I do have to pat myself down and wonder at my great good luck,” the author said. “My first three books took a decade to write and earned me less than two grand a year. I can’t remember how I survived. I wasn’t on the dole and my one Arts Council grant was used, against the rules, for maternity leave (a fact my daughter said recently was ‘just really sad’). But this is the béal bocht talking now, and I am happy to shut up.”
I am not writing fiction at the minute, and I blame global politics for that - it is hard to hold a sense of reverie
As well as the time that this will buy her to concentrate on her writing, is there anything specific she intends to do with this windfall?
“I can’t help fantasising that Trump will take over the Fed, crash the dollar and establish foreign exchange limits between now and September when the prize is awarded, so no intentions as yet.”
Will she take a sabbatical from teaching?
“The funny thing is, when I am working, nothing gets in the way of it, and when I am not working, everything does. I am not writing fiction at the minute, and I blame global politics for that – it is hard to hold a sense of reverie. But I don’t think I could blame teaching, which is usually a source of energy and interest for me. Actually, what eats your creative time is promotional work. So maybe a little less of that.”
Is she working on anything specific at present? Is there a research trip that has now become more feasible?
“I am editing a selection of my own essays for publication in November, called Attention. Meanwhile, I have cleared some time to go away and think. Of my last two novels, one was published into a pandemic lockdown and another was started during one, and I am not sure I have counted the cost of all that. I would like to get back to something – don’t ask me what.”
The prizes have awarded more than $19 million over the past decade, intended to allow writers to focus on their creative practice independent of financial concerns. This year’s other recipients are writers Sigrid Nunez, Patricia J Williams and Rana Dasgupta, playwrights Roy Williams and Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini, and poets Anthony V Capildeo and Tongo Eisen-Martin.
Previous Irish winners include Deirdre Madden (fiction, 2024), Sonya Kelly (drama, 2024), Darran Anderson (nonfiction, 2023), Wong May (poetry, 2022), Danielle McLaughlin (fiction, 2019), Marina Carr (drama, 2017) and Abbie Spallen (drama, 2016).
Enright is the eighth Irish writer to win the award, and the seventh Irish woman. Is that significant?
“Irish women have lived through what might be called rising times, and I think the feeling of moving out of difficulty generates urgent and authentic work. You don’t escape the past; you learn how to name it.”
The prizes were established in 2013 with a gift from Donald Windham in memory of his partner of 40 years, Sandy Campbell. They are administered by Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
