For most of them, it was the largest single payday of their lives. Because they’re students and incipient writers, two undertakings not generally known for sizeable financial returns, the dollar amount on the checks they received likely will stand unsurpassed for years to come.
They’re winners of the annual Hopwood Awards, and they were recognized publicly and rewarded financially for their literary efforts during the recent Graduate and Undergraduate Hopwood Awards Ceremony April 15 in Rackham Auditorium.
Some of these young writers will continue on their literary paths; some may even find greatness. They’re in good company. Past winners include playwright Arthur Miller, screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, poet Frank O’Hara, and novelists Marge Pearcy and Mary Gaitskill.
It was through the success and generosity of another writer that the Hopwood Awards were conceived. First given in 1931, the nationally recognized honors are funded from the proceeds of an endowment willed to the University by Avery Hopwood, a prominent American dramatist of the early 20th century and member of the U-M Class of 1905.
This year, the awards totaled $119,500, with another $31,600 given in related honors. Nearly $2 million has been awarded since the program’s inception.
At the ceremony, translator and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Richard Howard, author of “Talking Cures,” “Trappings,” “Untitled Subjects” and “Alone with America,” spoke on the fundamental relationships between writers and readers, and the apparently diminishing existence of writers as readers.
His remarks, entitled “The Fatality of Reading,” explored the possibility that the act of reading, the engagement of the reader’s mind with that of the writer, may be falling victim to “the legacy of television, the convention of a monkey’s span of attention rather than any particular addiction to what appears on the tiny screen.”
He acknowledged that some of his literature students—Howard has taught at colleges and universities in Boston, New Haven, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Houston and, most recently, New York—seem to be increasingly disinterested in reading for the sake of discovery. Howard also contends that new writers often fail to recognize the fixed bond between the existing texts and the depth and complexity they’re able to create in their own writing. “It has become clear to me that the reading of books has very little to do with contemporary literary ambitions,” he said.
“Without reading, writing will perish from the Earth,” Howard concluded. “This is because we do not write for ourselves, we do not write for each other—we write to join the great dead.”
The Hopwood Awards are judged in two phases. A local screening committee comprising writers from the University and the surrounding community recommends manuscripts to be forwarded to national judges, who evaluate the writings and assign points to each work. The point totals indicate the level of financial reward to be given to a specific piece of writing.
The national judges for the Hopwood Contest were Rohan Preston and Milan Stitt for drama, Rod Gailes and Paul Portuges for screenplays, Sven Birkerts and Sara Corbett for essays, Sharon Dilworth and Allan Gurganus for short fiction, and Reginald Gibbons and Laura Kasischke for poetry.
U-M English Department Prof. Laurence Goldstein presented the awards to fiction writers, poets, essayists and dramatists from undergraduate and graduate programs at the Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint campuses.
Some of the top winners were Mitchell Kiven for drama, Tyler Lieberman for screenplay, Elizabeth Kostova for novel, David Morse and Marianna McDevitt Green for essay, Rattawut Lapcharoensap for short fiction, and David Ruderman for poetry. Prize amounts range from $1,500-$7,000, with some writers netting even more as multiple winners.
More information on the Hopwood Awards Program is available at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/hopwood/.
