Windham-Campbell Prize awards Emmanuel Iduma, author, A Stranger’s Pose, the 2022 Prize for Non Fiction

“In elegant, meditative vignettes that integrate art criticism, canny observation, and lyrical dispatches, Emmanuel Iduma invites readers to physically and spiritually observe the expansiveness of the world and its people.“As a Cameroonian living in the USA, this book is my treasure, my personal bible, and my crying companion. Every word is beautiful. Every picture is magical. It makes me miss my country but it also comforts me.”

Windham-Campbell Prize

Over the last few years, our relationship with how we travel has changed with the mental being as important as the physical. For this reason, the way that writers catalog journeys has become even more precious, with readers looking for writing that evokes memory as much as it incites wanderlust. 

Emmanuel Iduma’s A Stranger’s Pose has been doing this for readers since 2018. With this collection of essays on “love, family, tradition, place, and passion” through various West African cities, he created for many an evocative book that asks and answers the question: “What is the place of a stranger in a city?” But this question is not solely synonymous to this collection of essays, but is a thread through his work which appears in publications including: Granta, The New York Review of Books, Aperture, n+1, Best American Travel Writing 2020, Artforum, and Art in America.

It is for this reason, that Iduma’s honors include already, Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation grant for arts writing, the inaugural Irving Sandler Award for New Voices in Art Criticism from AICA-USA, the C/O Berlin Talent Prize for Theory, and a Silvers Grant for Work in Progress.

On March 29th 2022, Emmanuel Iduma adds the Windham-Campbell Prize for Non Fiction 2022 to the list, a recognition of the need for Iduma’s continued voice in the literary space and the necessary financial compensation that will allow him to do the needed work.

In response to this win, Iduma says: “It was a stunner, and still is, to be informed of the award of a prize of such magnitude and preeminence, to be listed alongside many writers I look up to. I am filled with gratitude to the Beinecke Library at Yale University and remain keen with hope for the paths now made possible for me to tread.”

Already, with his recently launched Newsletter, Tender Photo which highlights the work of early to mid-career photographers based on the continent, Iduma is impacting how the story of Africa is told, by centering the lens firmly in the hands of her people.

Iduma’s work can be accessed directly from his website, his essay collection; A Stranger’s Pose can also be purchased directly from Cassava Republic Press and in bookshops across the world.