Congratulations to RC students, RC Creative Writing and Literature majors, or participants in courses offered by the same program for your Hopwood Awards. Kudos for achieving this prestigious honor, and for joining a very elite group of former winners whose work indelibly impacts our world. Nine of the 41 awards have an RC connection, and are listed below. We congratulate the following winners on their amazing accomplishments:

Elena Ramirez-Gorski, a class of 2020 LSA Residential College Creative Writing and Literature student for: Undergraduate Nonfiction, the Helen J. Daniels Prize, the Leonard and Eileen Newman Writing Prize in Fiction, and the Cora Duncan Award in Fiction

Kennedi Killips, a class of 2020 LSA Residential College Creative Writing and Literature student, for Undergraduate Poetry

Jena Vallina, a class of 2022 LSA Residential College Creative Writing and Literature student, for Undergraduate Nonfiction

Ariel Everitt, a class of 2020 LSA English and Residential College Creative Writing and Literature student, for Hopwood Novel

Kitty Wilcox, a class of 2020 LSA English and Residential College Creative Writing and Literature student, for Undergraduate Poetry and the Paul and Sonia Handleman Poetry Award

Congratulations, too, to the faculty who have worked with these students on their creative work!

 

The Hopwood Program administers the Avery Hopwood and Jule Hopwood Awards in writing as well as many other contests and prizes. The program was endowed by Avery Hopwood, a popular American dramatist and member of the Michigan Class of 1905. Mr. Hopwood bequeathed one-fifth of his considerable estate to the University of Michigan with the stipulation that it be used to encourage "the new, the unusual, and the radical" in creative writing among students. During the years that have passed since the first Hopwood Awards were made in 1931, we have been able to award a cumulative total of almost $6,000,000 to more than 3,300 gifted writers. Former winners include Arthur Miller, Robert Hayden, John Ciardi, Frank O’Hara, Marge Piercy, Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop, Merrill Gilfillan, Lawrence Kasdan, Jane Kenyon, Mary Gaitskill, John U. Bacon, Susan Jane Gilman, Gabrielle Civil, Bich Minh Nguyen, Paisley Rekdal, Davey Rothbart, Diane Cook, Elizabeth Kostova, Jesmyn Ward, Celeste Ng, Randa Jarrar, Samiya Bashir, Chigozie Obioma, Jia Tolentino, Brit Bennett, Lillian Li, Danez Smith, and more. More information can be found at the Hopwood website.