The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast

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:

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.

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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:

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.

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Alexis Pauline Gumbs joins Windham-Campbell Prizes director Michael Kelleher to talk about the beauty of Audre Lorde's poetry and why more people should know her as a poet as well as an essayist.

READING LIST:

For a full episode transcript, click here.

Born in Summit, New Jersey in 1982, Alexis Pauline Gumbs is an activist, critic, poet, scholar, and educator. A self-described “Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist,” Gumbs uses hybrid forms to re-envision old narratives and engage with the history of Black intellectual-imaginative work. Her four books of prose-poetry include Dub: Finding Ceremony (2020), Undrowned (2020), M Archive (2018), and Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity (2016). Dub, M Archive, and Spill form a kind of triptych, each engaging with the work of a Black woman theorist: Sylvia Wynter in Dub; M. Jacqui Alexander in M Archive; and Hortense Spillers in Spill. In all her work, Gumbs raises the stakes of literature within and beyond the page. She is a people’s poet, awake to the form’s capacity to imagine alternative worlds, across and through time. Her worldview is capacious and paradigm-shifting, speaking to urgent realities with exuberant love, and inviting activists, artists, and readers alike to join in her participatory presentations. A graduate of Barnard College and Duke University, Gumbs is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (2022), a Whiting Award (2022), and a National Humanities Center Fellowship (2020). She lives in Durham, North Carolina, and is currently at work on a biography of Audre Lorde.

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.

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Darran Anderson is our first guest on the show and he joins Windham-Campbell Prizes Director Michael Kelleher to talk about the ever-shifting magic of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.

READING LIST:

For a full episode transcript, click here.

Darran Anderson is an Irish essayist, journalist, and memoirist. Over the past decade, he has written on the intersections of culture, politics, urbanism, and technology for a wide variety of publications, including The Atlantic, frieze magazine, TheGuardian, and the Times Literary Supplement. His first book was Imaginary Cities: A Tour of Dream Cities, Nightmare Cities, and Everywhere in Between (2015) and his second, Inventory (2020), was a finalist for the PEN Ackerley Award. Born in Derry, he now lives in London.

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.

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Starting May 2, join us every other Tuesday for conversations with the recipients of the 2023 Windham-Campbell Prizes about their favorite books.

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