Indigenous writer Ali Cobby Eckermann wins Windham-Campbell Prize

Adelaide-based indigenous poet and writer Ali Cobby Eckermann has received one of the world’s richest literary awards.

Ali Cobby Eckermann

Adelaide-based indigenous poet and writer Ali Cobby Eckermann, pictured, has received one of the world’s richest literary awards, a $US165,000 ($215,000) Windham-Campbell Prize administered by Yale University in the US. Eckermann, 53, was one of eight writers who received that amount.

Another winner was New Zealand poet Ashleigh Young. The lucrative prize started in 2013 and aims to support the work of writers from around the world. The writers are nominated confidentially and the prize is judged anonymously. The first any winner knows about it is receiving a phone call from Yale. The judges say Eckermann had “produced a substantial and formally innovative body of work’’.

Her most recent collection is Inside My Mother. The prizes will be awarded at an event in Yale in September, where Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard will deliver the keynote speech. Previous Australian winners of the prize include Helen Garner last year, and playwright Noelle Janaczewska in 2014.