Winter 2022

Winter 2022 cover image

Volume 110, No. 4
Winter 2022
The Yale Review

Buy This Issue

THE THRILL OF READING great writing happens when language meets feeling and changes the way we think forever. We don’t know why it has this effect or necessarily how to reproduce it, but when it happens, we know it.

Often we bestow a literary prize upon these works, calling the winner “the best.” One can love great writers equally for different reasons, however, without ever caring about which one is “the best.” When Donald Windham established the Donald Windham–Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes in honor of his lifelong partner Sandy Campbell, whose money he had inherited, it embodied this spirit. Unlike most literary prizes that pit writers against each other, Donald Windham wanted us only to find them, celebrate their accomplishments, and support their future work.

There was an extraordinary spirit of generosity in his gift. In his will, he spoke of “warmth” as a value, and then he did something donors almost never do: he left the decisions about how and to whom to give the prizes up to the people who managed them. It is the rare person who gives large amounts of money without asking for something significant in return.

And so the Windham-Campbell Prizes were born. A decade, eighty-three writers, and more than thirteen million dollars later, we’re celebrating our tenth anniversary with yet another extraordinary group of writers from around the world.

There is no winner. There are eight uniquely wonderful writers. We celebrate them all. As we have done since 2020, the Windham-Campbell Prizes and The Yale Review have collaborated to do so in the pages of The Yale Review, another space where we celebrate writers’ diverse minds and aesthetics. In the pieces below, you will find work from this year’s winners but also a sampling from former Windham-Campbell Prize recipients who were kind enough to share new work with us. We invite you to a festival in print, in the hopes that you will relish these words now and in the years to come.

Michael Kelleher and Meghan O'Rourke



Table of Contents

Nonfiction

A Faceless Compass

Johannesburg’s haunted streets
Ivan Vladislavić
December 6, 2022

Bottle Torches

A fantasia on Nari Ward
Ishion Hutchinson
December 6, 2022

Case Studies

A critic tracks herself
Margo Jefferson
December 6, 2022

Reclaiming Tituba

The real story behind Arthur Miller's character
Winsome Pinnock
December 6, 2022

Remembering Benares

The city that inspired The Romantics
Pankaj Mishra
December 6, 2022

Tender Light

The bond between photography and narrative
Emmanuel Iduma
December 6, 2022

The Path to "River See"

How improvisation and ancestry shape a playwright's work
Sharon Bridgforth
December 6, 2022

The Rest of the Story

Remembering childhood
Carolyn Forché
December 6, 2022

Fiction

Jana Dives

Tsitsi Dangarembga
December 6, 2022

The Postman

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
December 6, 2022

Poetry

After the Biopsy

Kwame Dawes
December 6, 2022

Chickens

Wong May
December 6, 2022

O’er

Zaffar Kunial
December 6, 2022

Remembering the World

Wong May
December 6, 2022

The Anabasis of Godspeed

Ishion Hutchinson
December 6, 2022

The Flight

John Jeremiah Sullivan
December 6, 2022

The Flood

Cathy Park Hong
December 6, 2022

The Last Word

Zaffar Kunial
December 6, 2022

The Lawn

Wong May
December 6, 2022

The Toll

John Jeremiah Sullivan
December 6, 2022

Threnody

Lorna Goodison
December 6, 2022

Translation

Carolyn Forché
December 6, 2022

Watershed

Zaffar Kunial
December 6, 2022

Interviews

Geoff Dyer

The essayist on not having a career
James Surowiecki
December 6, 2022

More Issues

Fall 2024 cover image

Fall 2024

View Issue

Summer 2024 cover image

Summer 2024

View Issue

Spring 2024 cover image

Spring 2024

View Issue

Winter 2023 cover image

Winter 2023

View Issue

Fall 2023 cover image

Fall 2023

View Issue

Summer 2023 cover image

Summer 2023

View Issue

Featured

Case Studies

A critic tracks herself
Margo Jefferson

Reclaiming Tituba

The real story behind Arthur Miller's character
Winsome Pinnock

A Faceless Compass

Johannesburg’s haunted streets
Ivan Vladislavić