These rules and submission guidelines apply to all Hopwood contests and are required for all submissions. Students must review these guidelines before submitting their work. Failure to follow the requirements may result in disqualification.
Students should also review the information for the specific contest they plan to enter, as individual contests may have additional eligibility requirements, submission requirements, or restrictions.
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The following rules and submission guidelines apply to all Hopwood contests. Review each section below before submitting your work.
Eligibility & Enrollment
Entering Multiple Contests
Previous Hopwood Entries
Deadlines & Submission Portal
Authorship, Originality & AI
Publication & Previous Work
Manuscript Formatting
Pen Name
Title
Images & Anonymity
Archives & Publication Rights
Contest Results
Eligibility & Enrollment
Who can enter?
University of Michigan undergraduate students enrolled for at least six credits and graduate students enrolled for at least three credits may enter Hopwood contests for as long as they remain eligible. Students can be enrolled at any University of Michigan campus. December graduates may enter the contest for the upcoming year as long as they submit their entries while they are still enrolled as University of Michigan students.
Course requirements
Students need not be enrolled in, or have previously taken, any particular course to enter a Hopwood contest.
Entering Multiple Contests
Students may enter all of the contests for which they are eligible, but may submit only one entry per contest.
Students may not enter the same manuscript in more than one contest except where it is explicitly permitted in the contest guidelines.
Previous Hopwood Entries
Manuscripts that have won a place in any Hopwood-managed contest in a previous year may not be entered again, even if the manuscript has been revised. Students who were finalists in a previous year may re-enter their manuscripts.
Previous Winners
Students who won first or second place in a Hopwood contest in a previous year may not enter that contest again, although they may enter other contests for which they are eligible. Students who won third through fifth place in a Hopwood contest in a previous year may re-enter that contest, but not with the same manuscript, even if the manuscript has been revised. Students who were finalists in a previous year may re-enter that contest with the same manuscript or a different manuscript.
Deadlines & Submission Portal
Submission deadline
Entries must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. on the day of the deadline listed on the Hopwood website. For 2027, the deadline is January 14.
December graduates must submit their entries by 11:59 p.m. on the Friday before fall commencement. For the 2027 contest, the deadline is December 18, 2026.
No late submissions will be accepted.
Submission portal
All manuscripts must be submitted through the Hopwood contest portal. The link for the portal can be found here: Hopwood Contest Portal →
Authorship, Originality & AI
Students must be the sole authors of the manuscripts they submit. No part of the text for a submission should be composed by another person, except for attributed quotations. Photographs or graphics included with the text, if not the work of the author, must be credited. For the Text/Image Composition Prize, the contestant must be the author of both the text and images.
No part of a submission should be AI-generated.
Publication & Previous Work
With the exception of the David Porter Award for Excellence in Journalism, submissions should not have been accepted for publication or previously published in any form except undergraduate literary journals, campus newspapers, or a personal website.
Work published on a professional website is considered published. Work that has been submitted for publication but has not yet been accepted may be submitted.
Manuscript Formatting
All manuscripts must be submitted as PDFs. Students are responsible for correctly formatting and submitting their PDFs.
Font
Manuscripts should use a 12-point standard font such as Times Roman. Screenplay manuscripts should use 12-point Courier or Courier New. There can be exceptions to this rule if variation in typeface and/or font size is integral to the composition.
Margins
Manuscripts should have one-inch margins except for the left margin, which should have a one-and-a-half-inch margin. Poetry and Text/Image Composition manuscripts may have wider margins, but not narrower ones.
Spacing
Manuscripts for prose submissions should be double-spaced. Spacing for drama and screenplay contests should follow standard formatting for those genres. Poetry manuscripts are often single-spaced between lines and double-spaced between stanzas, but poems may be spaced on the page in a variety of ways.
Page numbers
All manuscripts longer than a page should include page numbers. The title page and any front or back matter that is not part of the main text should not be numbered or included in the page count. Examples include a Dramatis Personae page for a play or an optional Table of Contents for a collection of poetry.
Pen Name
Students should choose a pen name and use the same pen name for each submission entered during the same contest year. No part of the student's real name should be used as a pen name or appear anywhere in the manuscript or on the title page.
Title
Manuscript title
Every entry must have a title. Because the titles of winning and finalist manuscripts will be announced at the Hopwood Awards Ceremony and published on the website, contestants should avoid using a generic title such as “Hopwood Submission.” For manuscripts containing two or more distinct works, contestants may give the manuscript a separate title or include a list of those works within the title (for example, Three Stories: X, Y, Z).
Title Page
Every submission should include a title page. The title of the manuscript should be centered approximately one-third of the way down the page. Three centered lines at the bottom of the page should include:
- The pen name chosen by the author
- The name of the contest
- The contest year
Images & Anonymity
Photos or other illustrations may be included as part of a submission, but images that identify the author in any way are prohibited.
Archives & Publication Rights
Hopwood archives
By entering a contest, students give permission to the Hopwood Program to retain a copy of their submission for the Hopwood archives. The Hopwood Program and the Bentley Library may give access to Hopwood-winning manuscripts by request.
Rights to your work
Contestants retain all rights to their work. Contest winners who subsequently publish a book containing all or part of an award-winning manuscript, even in revised form, must include an acknowledgment naming the prize and the year it was received.
Examples:
“[Name of work(s)] received first place in the 2027 Hopwood Graduate Award for Fiction at the University of Michigan.”
Or:
“An earlier version of [Name of work(s)] received first place in the 2027 Hopwood Award for the Novel at the University of Michigan.”
Contest Results
All contestants will receive notification via email about contest results by the first week in April. Emails to winners and finalists will include detailed information about the prizes they have won.
