U-M Hopwood Awards give top writers $114,500

ANN ARBOR—Jesmyn Ward is getting her University of Michigan master of fine arts degree in creative writing exactly 100 years after playwright Avery Hopwood graduated, but the two are now tied at opposite ends of a long, growing line of famous writers.

The Mississippi native won five 2005 Hopwood awards totaling $16,900 including top honors in the Drama, Novel, and Graduate Essay categories as well as two other Hopwood-administered prizes: the John Wagner Prize and the Geoffrey James Gosling Prize.

Ward said she came to Michigan’s nationally acclaimed writing program from Stanford University because of the collegial way it brings together top writers as students and faculty, all helping each other get better. "You get time to concentrate on your work and don’t feel you have to compete with other people.”

She was one of 34 winners of the 2005 Graduate and Undergraduate Hopwood Awards Ceremony who shared more than $114,500 in prizes. They join a long line of highly regarded U-M graduates that includes Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Arthur Miller, poet John Ciardi and novelist/poet Marge Piercy.

The Avery and Jule Hopwood Awards in Creative Writing are among the nation’s oldest contests for student writers, supported by a bequest from Avery Hopwood, a 1905 U-M graduate who was the most commercially successful Broadway playwright of the 1920s, and Jule Hopwood, his mother.

Another famous writer and U-M graduate, Susan Orlean, author of "The Orchid Thief" who was portrayed by Meryl Streep in the subsequent film "Adaptation," was this year’s Hopwood lecturer. Orlean told winners writing is exhilarating and fascinating "but can be terribly lonely because the big conversation of writing finally comes down to just a very quiet moment alone? Then the next story follows and the journey begins again. What we write is what’s left behind."

The other U-M student winners, who from across the country and around the world, are listed by home town:

 Michigan

ANN ARBOR—Robyn Anspach, Hopwood Graduate Essay Award, $3,000; Natalie Bakopoulos, Hopwood Novel Award, $2,500; Derek Lee, Hopwood Drama Award, $4,000 and Hopwood Graduate Short Fiction Award, $5,000; Hannah Holtzman, The Hopwood Undergraduate Short Fiction Award, $4,000 and The Stanley S. Schwartz Prize, $500.

Bloomfield Hills—Megan Jacobs, The Arthur Miller Award of the University of Michigan Club of New York Scholarship Fund, $2,000.

Canton—Ellen Yang, Hopwood Undergraduate Poetry Award, $3,500.

Charlevoix—Tim Tebeau, Hopwood Graduate Poetry Award, $2,000.

Clarkston—Tom Wisniewski: Hopwood Undergraduate Short Fiction Award, $6,000; The Robert F. Haugh Prize, $2,100; Hopwood Undergraduate Poetry Award, $4,000; The Paul and Sonia Handleman Poetry Award, $2,200.

Commerce Twp.—Victor Walbridge, Hopwood Drama Award, $2,000.

Comstock Park—Graham Mason, Hopwood Screenplay Award, $2,500.

Detroit—Phononzell Williams, The Kasdan Scholarship in Creative Writing, $5,300.

DeWitt—Alison Brown, The Meader Family Award, $1,250.

Huntington Woods—Erin Podolsky, The Kasdan Scholarship in Creative Writing, $5,000.

Kentwood—Andrew Kula, Hopwood Screenplay Award, $3,000.

Sylvan Lake—Rachel Chapman, The Dennis McIntyre Prize for Disitnction in Undergraduate Playwriting, $2,500.

West Bloomfield—Joanna Ruth Bock, Hopwood Graduate Poetry, $2,000.

Williamsburg—Nik Frank-Lehrer, Hopwood Screenplay Award, $2,500 and Hopwood Undergraduate Short Fiction Award, $3,500.

Ypsilanti—Erin Aileen Morris, Hopwood Undergraduate Poetry Award, $4,000.

 Out of State

CALIFORNIA:

La Canada—Devin Browne, Hopwood Undergraduate Essay Award, $6,000.

Sacramento—Jennifer Metsker, Hopwood Graduate Essay Award, $2,000.

CONNECTICUT:

Gilbert—Margaret Reges, Hopwood Undergraduate Poetry, $3,500.

GEORGIA:

Gainsville—Ashley David, The Meader Family Award, $1,250.

ILLINOIS:

Evanston—Z. N. Lupetin: Hopwood Drama Award $3,500; Naomi Saferstein Literary Award, $1,000; and The Dennis McIntyre Prize for Distinction in Undergraduate Playwriting, $2,500.

MARYLAND:

Bethesda—David Koll, The Leonard and Eileen Newman Prize in Dramatic Writing, $1,000.

Rockville—Brian Spitulnki, Hopwood Undergraduate Essay Award, $6,000.

NEW YORK:

New York City—Jenni Lapidus, The Chamberlain Award for Creative Writing, $2,500.

OHIO:

Brecksville—Derek Mong, Hopwood Graduate Poetry Award, $6,000 and The Helen S. and John Wagner Prize, $700.

Cincinnati—Dargie Anderson, Theodore Roethke Prize for the Long Poem or Poetic Sequence, $5,000.

UTAH:

Salt Lake City—Britta Ameel, The Meader Family Award, $2,000.

WISCONSIN:

Delavan—Elizabeth Ames Staudt, Hopwood Graduate Short Fiction Award, $7,000 and The Andres Beauchamp Prize, $700.

 Foreign

Manila, Philippines:

Peter Zaragoza
Singapore: