Gwendoline Riley Wins $175k Windham-Campbell Prize

British novelist Gwendoline Riley has been named as one of eight writers to receive a 2026 Windham-Campbell Prize on April 8, 2026. The award provides a grant of $175,000, approximately £131,500, to support her creative practice and recognize her body of work.

The Windham-Campbell Prizes are administered by Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The initiative distributes a total of $1.4 million, or £1.07 million, annually among writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama to allow them to focus on their work without financial pressure.

Critical Recognition of Riley’s Prose

An anonymous selection committee praised Riley for her meticulous and ruthless fiction and her incisive exploration of women’s experiences in the early 21st century. The committee specifically noted her ability to lay bare the cruelties and complicities of intimacy across her writing.

Riley is known for writing short novels that examine family tensions, fractured relationships, and the interior lives of women. Her acclaimed works include the 2017 novel First Love, which was shortlisted for the Women’s prize for fiction, as well as My Phantoms.

In a review of Riley’s latest novel, The Palm House, critic Clare Clark described her as the laureate of disconnection and noted that her bone-dry humour is edged with the vertiginous lurch of despair.

This is very hard for me to take in! I am more grateful than I can say; this unimagined vote of confidence will not go wasted on me.

Gwendoline Riley

Other 2026 Prize Recipients

Riley is one of eight recipients selected for this year’s awards. Other writers receiving the $175,000 prize include Adam Ehrlich Sachs, Kei Miller, and Australian playwright S Shakthidharan, who is also known as Shakthi.

Shakthidharan was recognized for several works, including the 2019 multigenerational epic Counting, and Cracking. The piece traces the history of 20th-century Sri Lanka and is inspired by the playwright’s own family history.

Counting and Cracking previously earned a variety of prestigious awards in Australia, including the $100,000 Victorian prize for literature.