GLR November-December 2024

ham having brunch together in New York in the ’40s, described Williams as “the greatest writer of the century” and then off handedly referred to Windham as “a good novelist.” “It’s a fascinating story,” comments Kelleher. “How does that penniless guy from Atlanta [Windham] go to NYC and suddenly find himself hanging out with the literary elite and all these great artists of the time?” Indeed, the story of both Wind ham and Campbell could be a Ryan Murphy mini-series. It would reflect a world of midcentury glamour, filled with bitch iness, celebrity, money, egos, and sex—as it dealt with their turbulent friendships with Williams and Capote. But it would also be a great love story of two gay men, Windham and Campbell, in a closeted era who had a nearly half-century open relationship, and whose passion for literature and whose acci dental fortune would result in one of the great legacies of the present century. Campbell died suddenly of a heart attack at age 66 while having breakfast at Windham’s and his house on Fire Island. Windham later wrote movingly about their last matter-of-fact morning together in a short story whose title bears the date of Campbell’s death, “June 26, 1988.” Windham became the ben eficiary of his partner’s sizable estate, mostly stock in the Campbell family business. But he continued to lead a modest life, living off the interest while the principal ballooned to $50 million over the next 22 years. Years earlier, the couple, having no heirs, had agreed to es tablish a fund for awarding generous monetary prizes to prom ising writers to free them from financial worries for a time and allow them to focus on their work. Following Windham’s death at age 89 in 2010, the Donald Windham–Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes were created. It is now the largest annual fi nancial gift in the world in its collective amount given annually and exclusively to English-language writers. To date, 99 writ ers from 21 countries have been recipients. The prizes, which are administered by Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, total $1.4 million annually, with $175,000 given to each of eight writers in four literary categories: two dramatists, two poets, two fiction writers, and two nonfiction writers. The names of the recipients are announced in March, and in mid-September the writers participate in several days of read ings, lectures, and discussions in New Haven. Prize winners over the past eleven years—many from the LGBT commu nity—have included Tarell Alvin McCraney, Naomi Wallace, Kia Corthron, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Lucas Hnath, Suzan Lori Parks, Julia Cho, Michael R. Jackson, Margo Jefferson, and Dominique Morisseau. ___________________________________________________________________________ AF OOTNOTE : Campbell began book collecting at an early age, writing to authors asking if he could send along his book to be signed. His library included signed first editions by Graham Greene, Vladimir Nabokov, William Faulkner, and E. M. Forster, as well as books personally annotated by authors such as Katherine Anne Porter, Isak Dinesen, Alice B. Toklas, and Marianne Moore. Most of these are housed in the Windham Campbell collection at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where the Donald Windham and Sandy M. Campbell collection of more than fifty years of photos, mementos, and cor respondence is also archived.

THE POWER O Y MIDLIFE OFGAY

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