Those emails in your junk folder are not always spam. Writers across the world were astonished to discover in their junk emails that an obscure American fund had given them $150,000 each.
Helen Garner, an Australian writer known for her books on true crime, almost deleted a strange email she found last week in her junk folder promising a large sum in return for her phone number. “I thought, ‘Oh, what the hell is this? Somebody’s definitely having me on’,” she said yesterday after being announced as one of nine international winners of a Windham-Campbell prize, an award set up three years ago.
Garner was about to “chuck” the email when she thought better of it and decided to phone her publisher.
Judged anonymously, the prize has no submission process, public longlist or shortlist and writers are unaware that they are in the running.
Abbie Spallen, an Irish playwright who was co-winner of the 2007 Susan Smith Blackburn prize, was also suspicious when told about her win. “I thought it was a scam at first.”
Advertisement
So did Hannah Moscovitch, a Canadian playwright, when she learnt she had won through a text message. “I thought it was ‘Congratulations, you’ve won a cruise to Florida if you pay $200’.”
Another winner was Tessa Hadley, a British novelist and professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University.