Hopwood Award
Encyclopedia
The Hopwood Awards are a major scholarship program at the University of Michigan
, founded by Avery Hopwood
.
Under the terms of the will of Avery Hopwood, a prominent American
dramatist and member of the Class of 1905 of The University of Michigan, one-fifth of Mr. Hopwood's estate was given to the Regents of the University for the encouragement of creative work in writing. The first awards were made in 1931, and today the Hopwood Program
offers approximately $120,000 in prizes every year to aspiring writers at the University of Michigan. According to Nicholas Delbanco, UM English Professor and Director of the Hopwood Awards Program, "This is the oldest and best known series of writing prizes in the country and it is a very good indicator of future success."
Previous Hopwood winners include Brett Ellen Block
, Max Apple
, Lorna Beers
, Sven Birkerts
, John Malcolm Brinnin
, John Ciardi
, Tom Clark
, Lyn Coffin
, Cid Corman
, Christopher Paul Curtis
, Mary Gaitskill
, Robert Hayden
, Garrett Hongo
, Lawrence Joseph
, Jane Kenyon
, Laura Kasischke
, Elizabeth Kostova
, Arthur Miller
, Howard Moss
, Davi Napoleon
, Frank O'Hara
, Marge Piercy
, William Craig Rice
, Davy Rothbart
, Betty Smith
, Ron Sproat
, Keith Waldrop
, Rosmarie Waldrop
, Edmund White
, Nancy Willard
, Beth Tanenhaus Winsten
, and Maritta Wolff
.
, the novel, short fiction
and poetry
. These awards are classified under two categories, Graduate or Undergraduate, except the novel and drama/screenplay, which are combined categories. Award amounts for this contest vary, but usually fall in the range of $1000 to $6000.
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, founded by Avery Hopwood
Avery Hopwood
James Avery Hopwood , was the most successful playwright of the Jazz Age, having four plays running simultaneously on Broadway in 1920.-Biography:...
.
Under the terms of the will of Avery Hopwood, a prominent American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
dramatist and member of the Class of 1905 of The University of Michigan, one-fifth of Mr. Hopwood's estate was given to the Regents of the University for the encouragement of creative work in writing. The first awards were made in 1931, and today the Hopwood Program
Hopwood Program
The Hopwood Program administers the University of Michigan Hopwood Award in literature, as well as several other awards in writing. It is located in the Hopwood Room at the University of Michigan and serves the needs and interests of Hopwood contestants. The Room was established by Professor Roy W...
offers approximately $120,000 in prizes every year to aspiring writers at the University of Michigan. According to Nicholas Delbanco, UM English Professor and Director of the Hopwood Awards Program, "This is the oldest and best known series of writing prizes in the country and it is a very good indicator of future success."
Previous Hopwood winners include Brett Ellen Block
Brett Ellen Block
-Life:Block was born and raised in Summit, New Jersey. She received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from the University of Michigan, where she was awarded the Hopwood and Haugh Prizes for Fiction Writing...
, Max Apple
Max Apple
Max Apple is an American short story writer, novelist, and university professor at The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Apple was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and received his B.A. and Ph.D from The University of Michigan...
, Lorna Beers
Lorna Beers
Lorna Doone Beers was an American novelist, poet, memoirist, and author of children's books. The winner of an early Hopwood Award for fiction, Ms. Beers was viewed by editors at E.P. Dutton in New York as a writer with the literary potential and the mastery of Midwestern themes and voices to...
, Sven Birkerts
Sven Birkerts
Sven Birkerts is an American essayist and literary critic of Latvian ancestry. He is best known for his book The Gutenberg Elegies, which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other technologies of the "electronic culture."Birkerts was born in Pontiac,...
, John Malcolm Brinnin
John Malcolm Brinnin
John Malcolm Brinnin was an American poet and literary critic. Brinnin was born in Halifax Nova Scotia to two United States citizens....
, John Ciardi
John Ciardi
John Anthony Ciardi was an American poet, translator, and etymologist. While primarily known as a poet, he also translated Dante's Divine Comedy, wrote several volumes of children's poetry, pursued etymology, contributed to the Saturday Review as a columnist and long-time poetry editor, and...
, Tom Clark
Tom Clark
Tom Clark is a Canadian television journalist. He has been a substitute anchor for CTV National News, and host of Power Play, a political program on CTV News Channel...
, Lyn Coffin
Lyn Coffin
Lyn Coffin is an American poet, fiction writer, playwright, editor, and translator.-Biography:Coffin was born on Long Island, New York. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Michigan in 1965. She holds Master's degrees in English, TESL , and Social Work...
, Cid Corman
Cid Corman
Cid Corman was an American poet, translator and editor, most notably of Origin, who was a key figure in the history of American poetry in the second half of the 20th century.-Early life and writing:...
, Christopher Paul Curtis
Christopher Paul Curtis
Christopher Paul Curtis is an American children's author and a Newbery Medal winner who wrote The Watsons Go to Birmingham: 1963 and the critically acclaimed Bud, Not Buddy. Bud, Not Buddy is the first novel to receive both the Coretta Scott King Award and the Newbery Medal...
, Mary Gaitskill
Mary Gaitskill
Mary Gaitskill is an American author of essays, short stories and novels. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories , and The O. Henry Prize Stories .-Life:Gaitskill was born in Lexington, Kentucky...
, Robert Hayden
Robert Hayden
Robert Hayden was an American poet, essayist, educator. He was appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1976.-Biography:...
, Garrett Hongo
Garrett Hongo
Garrett Hongo is a Yonsei, fourth-generation Japanese American academic, poet and academic. The work of this Pulitzer-nominated writer draws on Japanese American history and own experiences.-Educational background:...
, Lawrence Joseph
Lawrence Joseph
Lawrence Joseph is an American poet, writer, essayist, critic, lawyer, and professor of law.-Life:Joseph's grandparents, Lebanese Maronite and Syrian Melkite Eastern Catholics, were among the first Arab Americans to emigrate to Detroit, where both Joseph's parents were born...
, Jane Kenyon
Jane Kenyon
Jane Kenyon was an American poet and translator. Her work is often characterized as simple, spare, and emotionally resonant.-Life:...
, Laura Kasischke
Laura Kasischke
Laura Kasischke is an American fiction writer and American poet with poetry awards and multiple well reviewed works of fiction. Her work has received the Juniper Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Prize, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for...
, Elizabeth Kostova
Elizabeth Kostova
Elizabeth Johnson Kostova is an American author best known for her debut novel The Historian.-Early life:Elizabeth Z. Johnson was born in New London, Connecticut and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee where she graduated from the Webb School of Knoxville...
, Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...
, Howard Moss
Howard Moss
Howard Moss was an American poet, dramatist and critic, who was poetry editor of The New Yorker magazine from 1948 until his death. He won the National Book Award in 1972 for Selected Poems.-Biography:...
, Davi Napoleon
Davi Napoleon
Davi Napoleon, aka Davida Skurnick is an American theater historian and critic. She is a theater columnist for The Faster Times, an online newspaper, and a regular contributor to Live Design, a monthly magazine about entertainment design and designers...
, Frank O'Hara
Frank O'Hara
Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara was an American writer, poet and art critic. He was a member of the New York School of poetry.-Life:...
, Marge Piercy
Marge Piercy
Marge Piercy is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, a sweeping historical novel set during World War II.-Biography:...
, William Craig Rice
William Craig Rice
William Craig Rice is an American educator. He is currently the Director of the Division of Education Programs of the National Endowment for the Humanities....
, Davy Rothbart
Davy Rothbart
Davy Rothbart is an author, filmmaker, contributor to This American Life, and the editor/publisher of Found Magazine.-Background:...
, Betty Smith
Betty Smith
Betty Smith, née Elisabeth Wehner , was an American author.-Biography:Born on December 15, 1896 in Brooklyn, New York to German immigrants, she grew up poor in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and attended Girl's High School. These experiences served as the framework to her first novel, A Tree Grows in...
, Ron Sproat
Ron Sproat
Ronald Sproat was an American screenwriter and playwright known for Dark Shadows.He was openly gay.-Career:...
, Keith Waldrop
Keith Waldrop
Keith Waldrop is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, and has translated the work of Claude Royet-Journoud, Anne-Marie Albiach, and Edmond Jabès, among others. A recent translation is Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal .With his wife Rosmarie Waldrop, he co-edits Burning Deck Press...
, Rosmarie Waldrop
Rosmarie Waldrop
Rosmarie Waldrop is a contemporary American poet, translator and publisher. Born in Germany, she has lived in the United States since 1958. She has lived in Providence, Rhode Island since the late 1960s...
, Edmund White
Edmund White
Edmund Valentine White III is an American author and literary critic. He is a member of the faculty of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing.- Life and work :...
, Nancy Willard
Nancy Willard
Nancy Willard is an award-winning children's author, poet, and novelist. In 1982, she received the Newbery Medal for A Visit to William Blake's Inn...
, Beth Tanenhaus Winsten
Beth Tanenhaus Winsten
Beth Tanenhaus Winsten is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, visual artist, and creator of the digital genre tinyBigPictureshows with channels on Youtube and Vimeo. Her work has been broadcast on the National Geographic Explorer Series, TBS, PBS, ABC affiliates among others. The National Gallery...
, and Maritta Wolff
Maritta Wolff
-Biography:She was born on December 25, 1918 in born in Grass Lake, Jackson County, Michigan. She grew up on her grandparents' farm and attended a one-room country school. Wolff was a senior at the University of Michigan when she wrote a novel-length story for an English composition class that won...
.
The Graduate and Undergraduate Hopwood Contest
Awards are offered in the following genres: drama/screenplay, essayEssay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
, the novel, short fiction
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
and poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
. These awards are classified under two categories, Graduate or Undergraduate, except the novel and drama/screenplay, which are combined categories. Award amounts for this contest vary, but usually fall in the range of $1000 to $6000.