The Hopwood Graduate Awards include contests in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, screenplay, and the novel, as well as the Theodore Roethke Prize for the long poem or poetic sequence. Undergraduate students compete separately from graduate students in the poetry, fiction, and nonfiction contests. Undergraduate and graduate students compete together in the drama, screenplay, novel, and Roethke contests.
There are no restrictions on content or style. The judges for these contests are established writers in the contest genre who rank manuscripts according to their own tastes and standards of quality. Judges make their decisions based on the overall quality of the manuscript rather than a single poem, short story, or essay within a manuscript. The roster of judges changes from year to year.
No manuscript submitted to a Hopwood Graduate Award contest can be submitted to any other Hopwood Graduate Award contest with two exceptions:
- A student may submit all or part of their Theodore Roethke submission as part of their Hopwood Poetry submission as long as it makes up no more than half of their Hopwood Poetry manuscript.
- A student may submit one stand-alone chapter or excerpt from their Hopwood Novel submission as a short story in their Hopwood Fiction submission as long as it makes up no more than half of their Hopwood Fiction manuscript.
There are minimum and maximum page counts for each contest. The title page and any optional front or back matter (for instance, the Dramatis Personae page for a play or optional endnotes for an essay) should not be included in the page count. A manuscript will be disqualified if the body of the text fails to meet the minimum page count or exceeds the maximum.
Select a contest below to view its submission requirements and page limits. Also review the Rules & Submission Guidelines for requirements that apply to all Hopwood contests.
