The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast is a series of conversations with current and past prize recipients about books and plays they love, hosted by Michael Kelle...
For the final episode of the 2025 Winter Season, Mike talks with Helen Green, winner of a 2016 Windham-Campbell Prize for Non-fiction, about Henry Green's Party Going. They celebrate the joys of the NYRB Classics sale, the mysteries of Australian Rules football, and the joys of this ensemble novel.
Helen Garner writes novels, stories, screenplays, and works of non-fiction. In 2006 she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, and in 2016 she won the prestigious Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for Non-fiction. In 2019 she was honoured with the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. Her books include Monkey Grip, The Children’s Bach, Cosmo Cosmolino, The Spare Room, The First Stone, This House of Grief, Everywhere I Look, and her diaries Yellow Notebook, One Day I’ll Remember This, and How to End a Story. Her latest book is The Season.
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28:16
Dionne Brand on José Saramago's SEEING
Mike chats with Dionne Brand, winner of a 2021 Windham-Campbell Prize for Nonfiction, about the timely power of José Saramago's Seeing.
READING LIST:
Seeing by José Saramago, tr. Margaret Jull Costa • Blindness by José Saramago, tr. Margaret Jull Costa • Saramago's Nobel Lecture
Dionne Brand is the award-winning author of twenty-three books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Her twelve books of poetry include Land to Light On; thirsty; Inventory; Ossuaries; The Blue Clerk: Ars Poetica in 59 Versos; and Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems. Her six works of fiction include At the Full and Change of the Moon; What We All Long For; Love Enough; and Theory. Her nonfiction work includes Bread Out of Stone and A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging. Brand is the recipient of numerous literary prizes, among them the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Toronto Book Award, the Trillium Book Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize, and the 2021 Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction. She is the Editorial Director of Alchemy, an imprint of Knopf Canada, and University Professor Emerita at the University of Guelph. She lives in Toronto, Canada.
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.
The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast is a co-production between The Windham-Campbell Prizes and Literary Hub. Music by Dani Lencioni, production by Drew Broussard, hosted by Michael Kelleher.
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31:35
Olivia Laing on Charlotte Brontë's VILLETTE
Mike chats with Olivia Laing, winner of a 2017 Windham-Campbell Prize for Nonfiction, about the strange and confounding (and wonderful) pleasures of Charlotte Brontë's Villette.
READING LIST:
Villette by Charlotte Brontë • Suppose a Sentence by Brian Dillon • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath • Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy • The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Olivia Laing is the author of several books of nonfiction and fiction including The Garden Against Time and the forthcoming The Silver Book. The Lonely City (2016) was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and has been translated into 14 languages. The Trip to Echo Spring (2013) was a finalist for both the Costa Biography Award and the Gordon Burn PrizeLaing lives in Cambridge, England, and writes on art and culture for many publications, including The Guardian, The New Statesman, and The New York Times. Her debut novel Crudo was published by Picador and W. W. Norton & Company in June 2018.
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.
The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast is a co-production between The Windham-Campbell Prizes and Literary Hub. Music by Dani Lencioni, production by Drew Broussard, hosted by Michael Kelleher.
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35:25
André Alexis on Martha Baillie's THERE IS NO BLUE
André Alexis (winner of a 2017 Windham Campbell Prize for Fiction) joins Michael Kelleher to kick off the 2025 winter season of the podcast with a vibrant discussion of Martha Baillie's memoir, There Is No Blue. TW: the book and this episode include discussion of suicide and abuse.
Reading list:
There Is No Blue by Martha Baillie • The Search for Heinrich Schlögel by Martha Baillie • Falling Hour by Geoffrey D. Morrison • Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
For a full episode transcript, click here.
André Alexis was born in Trinidad and grew up in Canada. His novel, Fifteen Dogs, won the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His debut novel, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His other books include Pastoral (nominated for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize), Asylum, Beauty and Sadness, Ingrid & the Wolf, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa, and Lambton, Kent and Other Vistas: A Play. His new book, Other Worlds: Stories, is out from FSG in May.
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31:10
Kathryn Scanlan on Joseph Mitchell's JOE GOULD'S SECRET
Kathryn Scanlan (winner of a 2024 Windham Campbell Prize for Fiction) talks with Prize Director Michael Kelleher about legendary New Yorker journalist Joseph Mitchell's famous double-profile of New York fixture Joe Gould, the perils of running out of ideas, and the blurry line between fiction and reality.
Reading list:
Joe Gould's Secret by Joseph Mitchell • "Joe Gould's Teeth" by Jill Lepore • Bright Lights Big City by Jay McInerney • Old Mr. Flood by Joseph Mitchell
Kathryn Scanlan is the author of two novels (Aug 9—Fog and Kick the Latch) and one collection of short stories (The Dominant Animal). She won a 2021 Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and her work has appeared in Egress, Granta, and NOON, among other places, and her short story “The Old Mill” was selected by Michael Cunningham for the 2010 Iowa Review Fiction Prize. A graduate of the University of Iowa and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she currently lives in Los Angeles.
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The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast is a series of conversations with current and past prize recipients about books and plays they love, hosted by Michael Kelleher.
The Windham-Campbell Prizes are administered by Yale University Library’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast is a co-production between The Windham-Campbell Prizes and Literary Hub. Production & Engineering by Drew Broussard. Music by Dani Lencioni.
Ireland