3 hours ago
7
US writer Helen DeWitt has spoken out after being chosen as one of the original eight recipients of this year’s Windham-Campbell writing prizes, worth $175,000 (£130,000) each, but ultimately having to turn down the award because she was unable to participate in the promotional activities that the prize requires.
In a blog and a series of posts on X, the cult author of books including The Last Samurai said that she had been told she had won the award in February, but that receiving the money was “contingent on extensive promotion”, including participating in a festival, a podcast and a six- to eight-hour filming session for a promotional video.
At the time, DeWitt was “close to breakdown” after a series of professional and personal difficulties, she explained. “If you’re trying not to crack up, there are some things you can’t do; it’s hard to get people to accept that,” she wrote in a blog posted the day the winners of this year’s awards were announced.
Learning of the publicity requirements, she wrote that it was “impossible to imagine Pynchon or Cormac McCarthy, in early career, contemplating this with anything but horror”. She added: “If I had eight months clear before the festival I might be able to go to that, but how can I drop everything now, when I had finally cleared time to write after five very bad years?”
DeWitt’s blogpost recounted a lengthy exchange with prize director Michael Kelleher, during which he appears to agree to make some accommodations, such as relaxing the requirement to speak on a podcast. However, in response to DeWitt’s suggestion that other writers and her husband be filmed for the video in her place, she was told that her personal participation was essential.
Towards the end of the email exchange, DeWitt tells Kelleher she must “regretfully decline to accept the prize on the specified terms”.
The Windham-Campbell prizes were launched in 2013, funded by a bequest from the writer Donald Windham. Recipients, which this year include the British novelist Gwendoline Riley, are nominated confidentially.
“If the superstructure of the prize excludes people who are not able to do all the extra things you want, that hardly seems in the spirit of what was intended by its generous founders,” DeWitt wrote in an email to Kelleher, quoted in her blogpost.
“The Windham-Campbell prizes are life-changing awards rooted in the communal, public celebration of writers and their work,” said Kelleher in response to a request for comment from the Guardian. “We deeply appreciate all writers and respect that some individuals may choose not to participate. We celebrate the achievements of our recipients and the power of literature to connect us all.”
