“I am floored” - Professor Anne Enright awarded prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize
25 March 2025
The coveted Windham-Campbell Prize has been awarded to UCD professor and Booker Prize winner (opens in a new window)Anne Enright in recognition of her life’s work.
Awarded to writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama, the prize awards $1.4m to eight writers from around the world and is considered one of the world's most prestigious literary honours.
(opens in a new window)Other recipients for this year include novelist Sigrid Nunez, playwright Roy Williams and poet Anthony V Capildeo.
“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,” said Enright, who was named Ireland’s first Professor of Fiction in 2018 and is the Professor of Creative Writing at the UCD School of English, Drama and Film.
In a literary career that has delivered eight novels, three short story collections, and a memoir of motherhood, the Dublin writer has won several other prestigious awards including the Man Booker prize in 2007 for her fourth novel ‘The Gathering’, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the UK.
In selecting the Irish novelist, the judges for the Windham-Campbell Prize said: "In her wide-ranging and wryly unsentimental fiction, Anne Enright explores the limitations and joys of our human need for belonging.
"With her iconoclastic daring, Enright is skilfully able to wield shifts in narrative styles, viewpoints, and time to echo the true-to-life nature of consciousness and memory.
Continuing: "In her Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The Gathering, Enright displays the majestic heights of her prose in depictions of intergenerational wounds and reparations."
Professor Enright is the eight Irish winner of the Windham-Campbell Prize, which does not tell recipients that they have been nominated, and previous Irish winners include Sonya Kelly, Marina Carr, and Danielle McLaughlin.
It was established in 2013 as a gift from American novelist Donald Windham in memory of his partner of 40 years, actor and editor Sandy Campbell.
Other past recipients also include Olivia Laing, Tessa Hadley, Edmund de Waal, Hanif Abdurraqib, Percival Everett, Teju Cole and Pankaj Mishra.
Congratulating Professor Enright on winning the prestigious award, Minister for Arts Patrick O'Donovan said she had “been to the forefront of contemporary Irish writing for decades and is one of our most beloved writers with legions of readers at home and around the world”.
"The achievements of Irish writers are recognised around the world and her novels are a worthy addition to that proud tradition.”
By: David Kearns, Digital Journalist / Media Officer, UCD University Relations
To contact the UCD News & Content Team, email: newsdesk@ucd.ie
