NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Canadian author Andre Alexis has been named one of eight recipients of Yale University’s Windham-Campbell Prize, which comes with a cheque for US$165,000.

Billed as one of the world’s richest literature prizes, it is awarded to poets and writers of fiction, non-fiction and drama to support their literary pursuits.

Alexis won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize in 2015 for “Fifteen Dogs,” a story about 15 pooches gifted by gods with the skills of human consciousness and language.

The Trinidad native, who was raised in Ottawa, was hailed by the Windham-Campbell Prize judges for his “mastery of literature’s history and a startling power of invention, balancing intellectual sophistication with a sense of humour, pathos, and beauty.”

This year’s other winners were Carolyn Forche, Ike Holter and Maya Jasanoff of the United States; Erna Brodber of Jamaica; Marina Carr of Ireland; Ashleigh Young of New Zealand; and Australian aboriginal writer Ali Cobby Eckermann.

Canadian drama writer Hannah Moscovitch was a recipient of the prize last year.