Poet-critic Hanif Abdurraqib among 8 winners of $175,000 Windham-Campbell Prizes.

NEW YORK (AP) — Poet-critic Hanif Abdurraqib, fiction writers Deirdre Madden and Kathryn Scanlan and playwright Christopher Chen are among this year’s recipients of Windham-Campbell Prizes, for which winners each receive $175,000 cash awards. The prizes are designed to enable artists to “focus on their creative practice independent of financial concerns,” prize officials announced Tuesday. The other winners are cultural critic Christina Sharpe, dramatist Sonya Kelly and poets M. NourbeSe Philip and Jen Hatfield. Previous honorees include playwright Michael R. Jackson, critic-novelist Stanley Crouch and novelist Percival Everett.