Nigerian-British playwright and screenwriter Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini is a recipient of a 2025 Windham-Campbell prize, one of the world’s most significant international literary awards. The recipients receive $175,000 to support their work.
Self-described as “a multi-award-winning bionic, Queer playwright, screenwriter,” Ibini is lauded as “one of British theater’s most exciting voices.” Their work often centers women, disabled people, Queer people and the Black British experience through a magical realist lens, and they have written across a variety of mediums including children’s books, for the screen, and audio dramas for BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, and Audible.
Their debut play Muscovado (2014), portrays both the brutality of slavery and Black love and friendship on a 19th-century sugar plantation in Barbados. Their follow-up, Little Miss Burden (2019), draws from their Nigerian heritage as well as the anime Sailor Moon to explore disability and re-writing one’s own narrative. Their Olivier Award-winning play Sleepova (2023) is “a love letter to Black girls”, set at a sleepover between four friends. In recognition of the range and brilliance of their work, Ibini is the recipient of the Inevitable Foundation x Loreen Arbus Elevate Collective Award (2024), a Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright (2023), and an Alfred Fagon Audience Award (2015), among other honors.
Reacting to the prize, Ibini shared:
I am over the moon and currently hurtling through space somewhere near Jupiter… just marveling at all of this; the past, the present, and the crystallizing future. I am eternally grateful to my ancestors and everyone who has helped me get this far. And so appreciative to everyone involved at the Windham-Campbell Prizes for this thoughtful injection into my career.
Ibini is one of eight writers to receive these prestigious annual prizes. In addition Ibini (drama), the recepients are: in fiction, Sigrid Nunez (United States) and Anne Enright (Ireland); in nonfiction, Patricia J. Williams (United States) and Rana Dasgupta (United Kingdom); in drama, Roy Williams (United Kingdom); and in poetry, Anthony V. Capildeo (Scotland/Trinidad and Tobago) and Tongo Eisen-Martin (United States). The recipients, who are nominated confidentially and judged anonymously, did not know they were under consideration until Michael Kelleher, director of the Windham-Campbell prizes, personally delivered the news of their selection in mid-February.
The prizes were established in 2013 through a gift from writer Donald Windham in memory of Sandy Campbell, his partner of 40 years. Administered by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, part of Yale University Library, they are conferred annually to writers working in English anywhere in the world in fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry. Writers can be awarded the prize during any stage of their careers. To date, 107 writers from 22 countries have received the prize.
A huge congratulations to Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini! Read more and watch a short video about their work here.
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