The Prize

Aug 25, 2017 — Janicza Bravo is a writer and director based in Los Angeles. She was raised on an army base in Panama City and studied directing and design for theater at NYU before mounting plays in the U.S. and abroad. Her film...

Oct 25, 2011 — Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn is the director of the Pusher Trilogy, Fear X, Bronson, Valhalla Rising, and Drive, for which he won the best director prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.Photo by Kia Hartelius

Nov 19, 2008 — Iranian-American writer and director Ramin Bahrani’s feature films include: Man Push Cart (2005), Chop Shop (2007), Goodbye Solo (2009), 99 Homes (2014), and Fahrenheit 451 (2018). They have won awards and acclaim all over the world, from Venice to Cannes...

Rebecca Gilman is a playwright whose work includes Swing State, Luna Gale, Boy Gets Girl, and Spinning Into Butter. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her play The...

Robin Robertson has published seven books of poetry. The Long Take (2018) won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the Goldsmiths Prize for innovative fiction and was the first poem to be short-listed for the Booker Prize.

Jericho Brown is the author of the The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National...

Vinson Cunningham is a staff writer and critic for the New Yorker. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2024 and 2025. His 2024 debut novel, Great Expectations, was a finalist for the National Book Critics...

Louis Menand is a professor of English at Harvard University. He is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of several books, including The Metaphysical Club, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2002.

Michael Almereyda’s most recent film, Tesla, was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. His previous films include Nadja, Hamlet, William Eggleston in the Real World, Experimenter, and Marjorie Prime.

Tony Rayns is a London-based critic with a special interest in the film cultures of East Asia. He has been awarded the Kawakita Prize (2004) and the Foreign Ministry of Japan’s Commendation (2008) for services to Japanese cinema. His books...