HopwoodThe Newsletter Vol. LXX, 1 http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/hopwood/ January, 2009 HOPWOODHOPWOOD

You are all cordially invited to attend this year’s awards ceremonies. The Hopwood Underclassmen Awards Ceremony will take place on Tuesday, January 20, with a fi ction reading by Tobias Wolff fol- lowing the announcement of the awards. Mr. Wolff is the author of This Boy’s Life, In Pharaoh’s Army, The Night in Question, Old School, and Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories. The Graduate and Undergraduate Awards Ceremony will be held on Wednesday, April 22, with a lecture by Ellen Bry- ant Voigt. She is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently Messenger: New and Select- ed Poems 1976-2006 (W.W. Norton & Co., 2007); Shadow of Heaven (2002), which was a fi nalist for the National Book Award; Kyrie (1995), a fi nalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award; Two Trees; The Lotus Flowers; The Forces of Plenty; and Claim- ing Kin. Both awards ceremonies will be held in the Rackham Amphitheatre at 3:30 p.m.

The 71st Annual Summer Hopwood Awards were announced by Professor Nicholas Delbanco on September 25. The judges were John Lofy and Jennifer Metsker (Hopwood Award winner). And the winners are: Nonfi ction: Anya Dudek, $1,500; Joshua M. Munro, $1,500 Fiction: Jennifer Riemenschneider, $2,500 Poetry: Jessi Holler, $2,500 Marjorie Rapaport Award in Poetry: Meghann Rotary, $500; Molly Gail Shannon, $700

Continued, page 2

photophotoby by EleElenana SSeiberteibert photo by BarBarryry Goldstein Goldstein Inside: TOBIAS ELLEN 2 Publications by Hopwood Winners 2 -books and chapbooks Wolff Bryant 3 -articles and essays 4 -reviews Voight 5 -fi ction 5 -poetry 8 -audio 8 -fi lm 9 -drama performances and publications 9 News Notes 11 Awards and Honors 14 Deaths 14 Special Announcements Editortorr Andrea Beauchampa Design Anthony Cece Publications by Hopwood Winners*

Books and Chapbooks

Ronica Bhattacharya Bijou Roy, a novel, forthcoming from St. Martin’s in Fall 2009.

Gillian Bradshaw The Sun’s Bride, a novel, Severn, 2008.

Victoria Chang Salvinia Molesta, poems, University of Georgia Press, 2008.

Alex Cigale Chronicle of Calamities, chapbook, Pudding House, 2008.

Paula Coppedge From the Trenches to Classrooms: Continuing Education at Case Western Reserve University and the Evolution of ACE, Eagle Creek Press, Solon, OH, 2006.

Joe Friedman The Dream Workbook, nonfi ction, Carroll and Brown (UK); published by Orion Children’s Books (UK): Boobela and Worm, 2007 (chosen as one of the children’s books of the year by The Times); Boobela and the Belching Giant, 2007; and Boobela, Worm and Potion Power, 2008. Joe writes that each of the Boobela books “has four two-thousand word stories and brief interludes between them. The artist, Sam Childs, is brilliant.” The books haven’t been published in America yet but may best be ordered from Amazon in Canada. See www.boobela.com.

Mary George The Elements of Library Research: What Every Student Needs to Know, Princeton University Press, 2008.

Susan Jane Gilman Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, a memoir, Grand Central Publishing, forthcoming in March, 2009.

Richard Goodman The Soul of Creative Writing, will be published in paperback early in 2009

Derek Green New World Order, stories, Autumn House Press, 2008.

Matthew Hittinger Platos de Sal, a chapbook sequence, which will be published by Seven Kitchens Press in late spring 2009.

Sarah Houghteling Pictures at an Exhibition, a novel, Knopf, 2009.

Bill Ivey Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights, University of Califor- nia Press, 2008; edited with Steven J. Tepper, Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America’s Cultural Life, Routledge, 2008.

Josie Kearns Alphabet of the Ocean, poetry, March Street Press, 2008; The Theory of Everything, poetry, Mayapple Press.

Valerie Laken Dream House, a novel, Harper, 2009.

Gregory Loselle Phantom Limb, a poetry chapbook, Pudding House Press, 2008.

Joe Matuzak Eating Fire, poetry, forthcoming from Wayne State University, Spring 2010.

* Assume date unknown if no date is indicated. 2 Karyna McGlynn I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl, poetry, winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize, forthcoming from Sarabande Books in Fall 2009; Alabama Steve, Destructible Heart Press, 2008.

Rose Melikan The Blackstone Key, a novel, Touchstone, Simon & Schuster (US) and Little, Brown (UK), 2008. Two sequels, The Counterfeit Guest and The Mistaken Wife are due in 2009 and 2010.

Lyle E. Nelson My John Tyler: A Rare Career, Nova Science Publishers, Inc., New York, 2008. “It is one in a series, mostly completed, that will include biographies of all 43 presidents. Some First Ladies also published. Tyler was the 10th president.”

Bich Nguyen “Bich recently signed a two-book contract for two novels. Short Girls will be published in 2009 and a second (as yet untitled) novel will follow in 2011” (information from Porter Shreve).

Paula Spurling Paige A translation of Unmarried Women: Stories by the Neapolitan writer Matilde Serao, Northwestern University, Fall 2007; translation from the Italian of A Small-Town Marriage by Marchesa Colombi; Northwestern University Press, 2001; both books were written in 1885.

Porter Shreve When the White House Was Ours, a novel, Houghton Miffl in, 2008.

Ted Solotaroff The Literary Community: Essays 1968-2008, Sheep Meadow Press, 2008.

Holly Wren Spaulding The Grass Impossibly, poems, Michigan Writers Cooperative Press, 2008.

Anne Stevenson Stone Milk, poems, Bloodaxe (U.K.), 2008.

Jan Wahl Bear Dance, illustrated by Monique Felix, Creative Editions, 2008.

Rosmarie Waldrop A translation of Dichten =, No. 10: 16 New (To American Readers) Poets (with A. Duncan, et. al), Burning Deck, 2008; translated Quisite Moment by Anne Portugal, Burning Deck, 2008.

Ronald Wallace For a Limited Time Only, poetry, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008. He continues to co- direct the creative writing program in Madison, Wisconsin and to edit the University of Wisconsin Press poetry series.

Martha Zweig Monkey Lightening, poetry Tupelo Press, forthcoming in 2009.

Articles and Essays

Sven Birkerts “In the Commissaries of Hell,” AGNI #67, 2008; “Table Talk,” The Threepenny Review, Summer 2008; “The Advertent Eye,” AGNI #68, 2008.

Yoni Brenner “Shouts & Murmurs: Fourteen Passive-Aggressive Appetizers,” The New Yorker, July 21, 2008.

Phyllis Bronstein with B. J. Fox, J. L. Kamon, and M. L. Knolls, “Parenting and gender as predictors of moral courage in late adolescence: A longitudinal study,” Sex Roles, LVI, 2007; with G. S. Ginsburg and I. S. Herrara-Leavitt, “Parental predictors of motivational orientation and academic performance in early adolescence: A longitudinal study,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence, XXXVI, 2005; “The family environment: Where gender role socialization begins,” a chapter in Handbook of girls’ and women’s psychological health, edited by W. Worell and C. Good- heart, Oxford University Press, 2005.

3 Nigel Gearing “‘What Became of Waring?’: Class Reunion at Cambridge,” Michigan Quarterly Review, Fall 2008.

David Gewanter “Poets on Novels: on Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee,” NOR: New Ohio Review #4, 2008.

Richard Goodman “My Beautiful Ann,” appeared in the inaugural issue of Conclave. “It Sounds So Much Better When You Say Mal de Mer,” appears in the recently published anthology, Fishing’s Greatest Misadventures.

Matthew Hittinger A contribution to Dustin Brookshire’s blog, “Why Do I Write?”

Lawrence Joseph “Notions of the Other,” TriQuarterly #131, 2008.

William Lychack “Captives of the Junta: Letter from Burma,” The American Scholar, Fall 2008; “Borrowed Fathers,” Backtracks Magazine, Winter 2008.

Derek Mong “Dramatic Custom-Built Spanish Colonial,” Cream City Review, XXXII, 1, Spring 2008; “O h i o—,” forthcoming in Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes.

Randon Billings Noble “On Looking,” The Massachusetts Review, Summer 2007; “War Weary from a Dangerous Liaison,” The New York Times, November 16, 2008.

Marge Piercy “Why Do We Collect Pictures of Cats?” Forward, Painting Cats by Deborah Dewit March- ant, 2008; “Cinnamon Lamb,” Celebrity Recipes, National Museum of American Jewish His- tory’s Gala Album, 2008; “The Fall,” Experiencing Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, 5th Edition, edited by Roberta Fiske-Rusciano, McGraw Hill, 2008; an interview with Marge Piercy, New York Quarterly #64.

Sarah Sala “An Interview with Forker Girl, Thylias Moss;” with Ben Israel, “An Interview with Writer and Undertaker, Thomas Lynch,” Oleander Review #2, Fall 2008.

Porter Shreve Published three Op-Eds in the New York Times in May, during the week leading up to the Indiana Primary: “Hoosier Time,” “Clinton at the Crossroads,” and “Feeling Blue in Indiana.”

Dr. Sherman Silber With Mark P. Connolly, Michael S. Pollard, Stijn Hoorens, Brian R. Kaplan, and Selwyn P. Oskowitz, “Long-term Economic Benefi ts Attributed to IVF-conceived Children: A Lifetime Tax Calculation,” The American Journal of Managed Care, XIV, 9, 2008.

Reviews

Michael Byers “Three Novels of China,” a review of Farewell, Shanghai by Angel Wagenstein, Peony in Love by Lisa See, and A Free Life by Ha Jin, Michigan Quarterly Review: A Special Issue on China, Spring 2008.

Emery George A review of The Siege of Budapest: One Hundred Days in World War II by Krisztián Ungváry, East European Quarterly, XL, 2, June 2006.

Neil Gordon A review of The Devil’s Footprints by John Burnside, The New York Times Book Review, April 13, 2008.

Laurence Lieberman “Dunya Mikhail: The Laggard Bird,” a review of The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail, The American Poetry Review, May/June 2008.

4 Jess Row A review of Beijing Coma by Ma Jian, NYTBR, July 13, 2008.

Porter Shreve Reviews of: Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles in the Chicago Tribune; The Blue Star by Tony Earley in the Boston Globe; and Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing in the Boston Globe.

Edmund White a review of Wartime Writings, 1943-1949, The War: A Memoir, and The North China Lover by Marguerite Duras, The New York Review of Books, June 26, 2008.

Fiction

Natalie Bakopoulos “Babies,” Ninth Letter, Spring/Summer 2008; “Fresco, Byzantine,” Tin House, Fall 2008.

Phyllis Bronstein “An Evening at Rosie’s,” winner of the magazine’s annual short story prize, Lilith, Winter 2007-08.

Leslie Doyle “Harmony Bowl,” Clapboard House, Fall 2008, http://clapboardhouse.wordpress.com/.

Mary Gaitskill “Don’t Cry,” The New Yorker, June 9 & 16, 2008; “The Arms and Legs of the Lake,” Zoetrope: All Story, Fall 2008.

Alyson Hagy “Oil & Gas,” The Idaho Review, IX, 2008.

Ingrid Hill “The Light on the Windows at Marienburg,” Glimmer Train, Fall 2008.

Cyan James “Rolling Back the Sheet,” Oleander Review #2, Fall 2008.

William Lychack “Stolpestad,” Ploughshares, 2008; “The Shell Game,” Third Coast, Fall 2008; “Darwin’s Lotus,” The Missouri Review, Fall 2008; “Griswald,” The Sun, forthcoming November 2008; “My Father’s Brother,” Alaska Quarterly Review, Fall & Winter 2008.

Laura Hulthén Thomas “Zhila’s Lover,” Oleander Review #2, Fall 2008.

Melanie Rae Thon “Deer Song,” Web Conjunctions, July, www.conjunctions.com; “In This Light,” Conjunctions, print edition, Fall 2008.

Poetry

K. E. Allen “Border Loves,” Oleander Review #2, Fall 2008.

Al Alverbach “Spring Break—San Francisco City College,” “Gennessee and Judson – 1,” “Gennessee and Judson – 2,” Poets 11 2008, An Anthology of Poems from the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library Poets 11 Reading Series, San Franciso Public Library and Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. His poem “Old Believers” won the $25 second prize, the Ina Graham Award, in the War and Peace category of the Ina Coolbrith Circle’s 89th Annual Poetry Contest. http://www.coolpoetry.org/athomeinthecircle.html. In addition, Al has co- nominated and written the “argument” for a local poet for the post of San Francisco Poet Laureate, to be decided by the end of 2008.

5 Brent Armendinger “Sum Over Histories,” “Promiscuous,” “Reality is the Flaw,” forthcoming from The Diagram; “Walking as a Kind of Faith,” “Strange Cousins,” The Diagram, Summer 2007; “Twins,” Cut Bank #67, Summer 2007; “Sing-Scythe,” Good Foot, Summer 2007; “It Window,” “We Should Be Thawing Out of Mountains,” The Concher, Spring 2007; “It is Everyone’s Duty to Help by Simply,” Clave, II, Fall 2006; “Dear M,” “through not stay,” “All Talking is Arrows,” La Petite Zine, Fall 2006.

Victoria Chang “Hanging Mao Posters,” Michigan Quarterly Review: A Special Issue on China, Spring 2008; “Dear P.,” “Meanwhile,” “Self-Portrait in Portobello,” “Solitude,” Meridian, May 2008; “Elegy with a Dirt Trail,” “Sparrows,” The Kenyon Review, XXX, 3, 2008; “Happiness,” New England Review, XXIX, 9, 2008.

Alex Cigale “After The Hand of the Poet (N.Y.P.L)” in The Café Review, Winter 2008; “Claribel, Singing Memento Morir,” Chiron Review #82, Winter 2008; “The End of the Book: Beginning Writ- ing,” “Tower of Babel, After George Steiner,” Colorado Review, Fall 2007; “Tomorrow’s the Dominican Day Parade,” English Journal, March 2008; “A Man, A Woman, A Child, A Mon- ster,” “The Soul of Man is a Piece of Work,” Hanging Loose, Spring 2007; “Endangered But Entirely Undaunted,” “Sabotage; Susan, Date Pitter,” Main Street Rag, Spring 2006; “Baby Baby: Hip New Subway Stylings,” Third Wednesday, II, January 2008; “Kobe,” “Good People Become Better Because of,” “The Spirit of Lindbergh,” The Hamilton Stone Review, www. hamiltonstone.org/hsr14.html, Winter 2008; “Thomas Grasso, The Final Supper of,” Best Poem, February 27, 2008, http://bestpoem.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/alex-cigale/. Poems are forthcoming in Many Mountains Moving, Pavement Saw, Zoland Poetry, Nth Position (online), four poems in Stranger at Home: Anthology of American Poetry with an Accent, Interpoezia.

Emery George Translated “The Ancestral Portrait” and “Evening Fantasy” by Friedrich Hölderlin, Southern Humanities Review, XLII, 1, Winter 2008.

David Gewanter “In again Out again,” AGNI #68, 2008.

Rae Gouirand “January,” forthcoming in American Poetry Review; “Ask Both,” “Caveat,” “Finger,” “Paper Snow,” “Translation,” Bateau, Summer 2008; “Open Winter,” Bellingham Review, Summer 2007; “Present Tense,” The Concher, forthcoming in issue II; “Plurals,” “The Whole,” forth- coming in Forklift; “No Wonder,” forthcoming in The Journal; “By Infi nity,” “Ten Second Windows,” jubilat, Spring 2007; “Ritual Sum,” “Vanishing Point, 1425,” Michigan Quarterly Review, Winter 2007; “Night in Breath Marks,” “Passage,” Spinning Jenny, Winter 2008.

Matthew Hittinger “Upon Hearing the World Premiere of John Sichel’s Piano Trio in One Movement,” “Som- ersault Precedes Transformation,” plus an interview, Oranges & Sardines, Summer 2008; “Bethesda,” “Baked Peanuts,” “The Light, the Idea of Light, Repeats Itself at South Beach,” and “ZerO Ground,” MiPOesias, XX, 8, www.mipoesias.com/. Matthew’s picture is on the cover. “Local Lepidoptera Adopt Municipal Pool for Epic Opera Debut,” “Uncle Remus Denies the Ethnographer,” garrtsiluni, July/August/September 2008 “Transformation” Issue; “Earrings at the Ear Inn,” “45th St. Gutter Fall,” “V H D N K S U O R C,” SALit Magazine, II, 1; Poems in No Is For Wimps: “Even a Blind Squirrel Wants an Acorn,” “—Sittin’ There in My Gucci—Waitin’—” (8/15/08); “Ditmars to Delphi” (9/1/08); “Quad Skates Rule Skate Circle’s Roller Disco” (9/15/08).

Garrett Hongo “55,” “Coral Road,” The American Poetry Review, May/June 2008.

Tung Hui-Hu “Specimens Under Ice,” “Corrections,” Crazyhorse, Spring 2008.

Lizzie Hutton “The Yard,” “The Follow,” Beloit Poetry Journal, Summer 2008; “Northern Baroque,” Hayden’s Ferry Review, #42, Spring/Summer 2008.

6 Laura Kasischke “Riddle,” “The sweet by-and-by,” TriQuarterly #130, 2008; “Space, in chains,” Hayden’s Ferry Review, #42, Spring/Summer 2008; “Riddle,” New England Review, XXIX, 2, 2008; “Hospital parking lot, April,” “After Ken Burns,” Poetry, October 2008.

Josie Kearns “Template,” Driftwood, Spring 2008.

X. J. Kennedy “Jane Austen Drives to Alton in her Donkey Trap,” “Temps Perdu,” “The Odors of New Jer- sey,” The Hopkins Review, Summer 2008.

Lynne Knight “Living with Fog,” The Georgia Review, Spring 2008.

Laurence Lieberman “Visible Snarl of the Monolith,” Five Points, XII, 2, 2008.

Gregory Loselle “Magdalene Penitent, after de la Tour,” forthcoming in Sanctifi ed; “Learning to Shave,” “Dreaming the Animal Parade,” forthcoming in Oberon.

Carrie Luke “Willow Run Village, 1945,” “Babelfi sh,” Michigan Quarterly Review, Fall 2008.

Joseph Matuzak “Without a Still Life,” Driftwood, Spring 2008.

Derek Mong “Mia,” TriQuarterly #130, 2008; “Flying is Everything I Imagine Now and More,” “Morning, Noon, and Night,” Pleiades XXVIII, 1, Winter 2008.

Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren “Na Rua,” “NoDak,” Oleander Review #2, Fall 2008.

Marge Piercy “Today on my birthday,” “A new life,” “Direction uncertain,” Prairie Schooner, Volume 82, 3, Fall 2008; “For your information—from your pharmacist,” “How could I forget,” “You douche bag,” “The infection,” “I have been all over Michigan,” Paterson Literary Review #36, 2008-2009; “Side eff ects,” PeaceWork, April 2008; “Splitting open,” Earth’s Daughters, Splinters & Fragments, #72, 2008; “The two cities,” Tikkun, Israel at 60, May/June 2008; “How broad is the daylight,” “Death of the Amur Leopard,” Fifth Wednesday #2, Spring 2008; “Murder, incorporated,” Basalt, III, 1, 2008; “You settle,” Blue Collar Review, Spring 2008; “Sister moon,” 09 Lunar Calendar, Luna Press; “The pond just after dark,” “Travel broadens the mind,” Mobius, XXIII, 26th Anniversary Issue, 2008; “The entangling,” The Sow’s Ear, XVIII, 2, 2008; “When I learned what it meant,” Midstream, September/October 2008; “The call of the tame,” “Immunity,” New York Quarterly #64, 2008; “Confi dence comes easy to some, is faked by others,” Anderbo, 2008.

Margaret Reges “Dandelion Beer,” Oleander Review #2, Fall 2008.

Paisley Rekdal “Rhubarb,” “Lilies,” Prairie Schooner, Spring 2008; “Why Some Girls Love Horses,” “Possibili- ties in Love,” “Yes,” “Closer,” The Missouri Review, Summer 2008.

Rebekah Remington “Goat,” “Baltimore,” “Grief,” “Greater Winter,” “My Iberia,” The Missouri Review, Summer 2008.

Jennifer Reyna “At Night,” Oleander Review #2, Fall 2008.

Anne Stevenson “The Loom,” The Sewanee Review, Summer 2008.

Larissa Szporluk “Nativity,” reprinted from Meridian #9, Meridian, May 2008.

Laurence W. Thomas “To Perfect Bloom,” Ballard Street Poetry Journal, Winter 2008; “It’s Raining,” Blue Unicorn, June 2008. He was the featured poet and his poem “Equanimity” was published by the Maumelle Arts Council, Arkansas, September 2008. “Impending Storm,” Blue Unicorn, October 2008. He also notes that Third Wednesday, the literary arts journal which he co- edits with Hopwood winner Alex Cigale, celebrated its fi rst anniversary .

7 Ronald Wallace “Mrs. Grossheim’s, 1955,” “Never Again,” Ontario Review #68, 2008.

Martha Zweig “Alligator Resolve,” “Welcome to Senegal,” Green Mountains Review, XVIII, 1, June 2005; “Flickers,” one of several poems by locals posted along Hardwick, Vermont hiking trails, Summer 2005; “Pachyderm,” ABZ #1, 2006; “Advice,” “Bubblebath,” “Urogenital,” “USA Dyspeptic,” Pequod, October 2006; “Professional Sleep,” “Real Estate,” The Chattahoochee Review, XXVI, 2-3, June 2007; “Overturn,” “Let’s,” Boston Review, XXXIII, 1, January-February 2008; “Overturn,” on Poetry Daily, February 26, 2008; “Shingle,” The Paris Review #184, Spring 2008; “Anhinga Trail, with Seminole Wars,” The Journal, Spring-summer 2008; “Fox- fi re,” “Fictor’s Triolet,” Epoch, LVII, 1, 2008; “Calling,” “March Archaic,” Northwest Review, XLVI, 2, 2008.

Audio

Thayer Burch (formerly Thayer Bice) wrote in June: “Most recently, I collaborated with my composer- husband George Quincy (a Native American composer who studied and taught at The Juilliard) on a dramatic cantata entitled Pocahontas at the Court of King James I, which premiered in New York and was performed at the American Indian wing of the Smith- sonian in Washington. It is to be released on the Lyrichord label this month.” She also painted a portrait of Pocahantas for the cover of the CD.

Matthew John “Each year, I’m asked to compose original instrumental music/arrangements for the Prison Creative Arts Project (www.prisonarts.org). The music is used primarily on a DVD that is sent to hundreds of incarcerated artists in Michigan, artists who submitted artwork and had it displayed and sold at the annual gallery housed at the University of Michigan. The artists use the money to help support their families or their own educa- tion for when they fi nish their time. The DVD shows the collection of all the pieces, as the artists are not able to be physically present.” He collaborated with Pete Munday on a rendition of the spiritual ‘Were You There?’ Other original pieces that he composed were ‘Idol’s Death,’ and ‘Visit.’”

Davy Rothbart “We’ve been working hard with our friends at RapHappy, and we’re excited to announce that FOUND Sound is here! Over the years you all have shared some of your favorite strange and wonderful audio fi nds with us, and now it’s fi nally time to share those sounds back! We’ve got some of our favorites posted on the new FOUND Sound page, so put some headphones on and head over and check them out.” http://found.raphappy. com

Film

Matthew Hittinger wrote the text for the heart strobed, superimposed, with video by Liz Stephens and Matt Sargent, composer.

Pat Kaufman sent us her collage/video/novel entitled Save Her Save Her (A Snow Bird’s Tale). She is a painter as well as a writer and notes: “Save Her is my new literary form, a classic literary variation on the comic book.

8 Ty Lieberman wrote the screenplay for Kiss the Bride, which opened in May. The debut project of Shad- ow Factory, the fi lm was directed by C. Jay Cox and stars Tori Spelling, Joanna Cassidy, Tess Harper, Philipp Karner and James O’Shea. Variety notes that it “follows the upcom- ing nuptials of a heterosexual couple and how their happiness is disrupted by the arrival of a male high school friend with whom the groom had a fl ing.”

Drama Performances and Publications

Nigel Gearing “The French production of Marlowe’s Edward II was a great success - rather brilliantly staged, I thought (I caught up with it in Paris...) and everyone was very kind about my translation into French. I’ve translated the other (and more customary) way recently too - a play called This Child by J. Pommerat, which got a very good reading at a Festival of new work last autumn. It was staged to acclaim at Southwark Playhouse, and published. I’ve written a new play looping together half a dozen stories by Guy de Maupassant. The same director as did Le Grand Meaulnes will be doing it in the UK at the beginning of 2009.”

News & Notes

Phyllis (Burrows) Bronstein “I retired as Professor Emerita of Psychology from the University of Vermont in 2004, and moved to the Bay area, south of San Francisco. I continue with my research writ- ing, and also write a quarterly advice column called “Ask Aunt Academe” for The Feminist Psychologist, the newsletter of the Society for the Psychology of Women. Inspired by my recent fi ction award from Lilith magazine, I hope to get back to writing fi ction in the near future.”

David Garelick wrote to bring us up to date from his undergraduate days in the 60’s. “Most of my writing has been about music. I have been both a performer and a teacher for many years here in the Bay Area. I have not published a novel or a book of poetry or criticism, but I have written numerous reviews, album liner notes, radio documentaries, and occasional articles about Bluegrass music, Texas Swing, Italian music, mandolin orchestras, American roots music, etc. For the past ten years, I have produced a radio show at KRCB FM, in Santa Rosa, California, our local NPR affi liate station. The show is called “The Fiddling Zone,” and I play recordings of a wide variety of traditional folk music. I also have live performances and interviews, and occasionally I even publish transcriptions of some of my interviews in music publications. I’m thinking that I may put together a compilation of some of my interviews and other music writing into a book, tentatively called ‘Into the Fiddling Zone.’”

Neil Gordon is co-chair of the writing and literature program at Eugene Lang College of the New School and literary editor of Boston Review.

9 Tery Griffi n wrote that she and Deb Cohen were married on August 9, 2005 in a small outside wed- ding in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Tung-Hui Hu was Summer Poet-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.

Bill Ivey wrote in May: “Since graduation that year [1966] I went to grad school at Indiana, direct- ed the Country Music Foundation, and served as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in the second Clinton/Gore administration; I received an honorary doctor- ate from Michigan in the spring of 2001. I now direct a cultural policy center—the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy—here at Vanderbilt.”

Nathan Jones “We’re expecting our new addition in May. We’re obviously VERY happy, and Matthea’s looking forward to being a big sister. We’re hoping this child will be a good secretary of state in Matthea’s cabinet when she’s elected.”

Kristin Lems organized the Fourth Imagination for Everyone! Concert, held at National-Louis Univer- sity in Chicago, November 21 and 22. “The conference features educators from several school districts, local universities and arts-based organizations as well as performing artists who demonstrate best practice in using imaginative teaching to ignite student learning and insights.” Kristin participated in a panel, “Music as a Cuing System for Lit- eracy Activities.”

William Lychack and his wife Betty announce the birth of William Charles and Burgess Lee Lychack on June 28, 2007.

Jennifer Lutman and Suzanne Spring welcomed their fi rst child, Auden Margaret Lutman Spring (7 lbs., 6 oz.) on June 13, 2008. Jennifer writes: “About her name…yes, the connection to WH Auden is special but it’s not THE reason we chose the name. In all honesty, we saw it in a baby names book and said, ‘Oh, that’s perfect.’ It means ‘old friend’ in Welsh.” Jennifer was just promoted (from Interim Director) to Director of the Writing Center at Colgate University.”

Derek Mong wrote in August: “On Saturday, August 16th, 2008 yours truly got married to Anne O’Brien Fisher in a brief oceanside ceremony. Rilke, Robert Hass, and Walt Whitman were read! Annie is a Russian scholar and translator (PhD from Michigan, 2005), specializing in the works of Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov….For now we’re both in Louisville, where I’ve taken up the Axton Poetry Fellowship for 2008-2010, though Annie will be in Moscow much of the spring, attending to an NEH grant she received last spring. Last year I lived in the Berkshires and taught a class through Inkberry, a North Adams based non-profi t pro- moting the literary arts in Western Mass. In the spring I held a poetry workshop at Edna St. Vincent Millay’s estate soon-to-be-restored home (Steepletop) in Austerlitz, NY. The highlight though was recording a podcast with Marvin Bell, host Jay Bates, and a hand- ful of other poets via A River and Sound Review, a quirky little radio show that travels around the Pacifi c Northwest, enlisting A-list writers and lesser known accomplices for interviews, radio-satire, and readings. It’s sort of a variety show, but without the spinning plates. Our episode (#20) broadcasted from Orcas Island in the Puget Sound.”

Christine Montross and announce the birth of their son, Calder Bailey Smith-Montross, born on April 16. His big Deborah Smith sister Maude just turned two.

Bich Nguyen was promoted to Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Purdue begin- ning 2008-2009.

10 Paula Spurling Paige “Now that I’ve retired from teaching Italian and French at Wesleyan University, I’m writ- ing fi ction again, and have completed a collection of short stories. Although I haven’t yet published anything of my own, a story of mine was recently long-listed for the Fish International Fiction Prize in Ireland.”

Marge Piercy “I’m presently writing a non-fi ction book for Basic Books that is about the cultural history of the rose. It is about people’s relationship with the fl ower over the centuries into the present.”

Paula Rabinowitz gave a talk, “Savage Holiday: 12 Million Black Voices and True Crime,” on Oct. 31 in the U of M English Department. The event was sponsored by the US Literatures and Cul- tures consortium. “Her ongoing book projects: ‘The Demotic Ulysses: How Pulp Fiction Brought Modernism to America,’ explores the impact of the paperback revolution on censorship, sexuality, audiences and literary taste; ‘Frida, Miss O’Keefe and M.E.: Frag- ments on Modernist Women Painters’ looks at the reputations of three North American women whose works and lives forged a complex nexus between nationalism, feminism and modernism; ‘The Times of Space: Women’s Installations’ charts women’s time-based art since the 1970’s.”

Timothy and Carrie “Our daughter Elise Nicole Tebeau was born June 28, 2008. She weighed 8 lbs. 2 oz. and Strand Tebeau has a full head of red hair!”

Keith Waldrop writes that volume 52 of Burning Deck Poetry Books is now available. It’s a Heather C. Akerber’s Dwelling, poetry. The press has recently issued Dichten =, No. 10: 16 New (To American Readers) Poets translated from the German by A. Duncan, Rosmarie Waldrop (Hopwood Award winner), et. al; Secret of Breath by Isabelle Baladine Howald, translated by Élena Rivera; Quisite Moment by Anne Portugal, translated by Rosmarie Waldrop.

Awards& Honors

We are very happy to announce that the University of Michigan Club of New York Scholarship Fund has endowed the Arthur Miller Award on a permanent basis. We’re very grateful for their generosity and know the winners will be, too.

Donald Beagle gave a presentation on his book about the confederate poet and chaplain Fr. Abraham Ryan, Poet of the Lost Cause (University of Tennessee Press, 2008) at the Southern Festival of Books in October. The book has been nominated for the McLemore Prize for books on southern history with a link to Mississippi.

Phyllis Bronstein was named “Faculty Woman of the Year” at the University of Vermont in 2004. She was the invited Convocation speaker at the University of Vermont in the same year.

Jeremiah Chamberlin His story “Missionaries,” published in the Hopwood Issue of Michigan Quarterly Review last year, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize

Alex Cigale was awarded a North Manhattan Artist Alliance grant “for the production of a manu- script, I was saving them, they were saving me, that combines poetry, memoir, art and cultural criticism, writing instruction, and photographs of his assemblage art. The work intends to explore the values of Outsider Art for its healing properties.”

11 Christopher Paul Curtis Elijah of Buxton, published by Scholastic in 2007, was named a Newbery Honor book for 2008. “In Elijah of Buxton, Elijah is the fi rst free-born child in Buxton, a Canadian community of escaped slaves, in 1860. With masterful storytelling, vibrant humor, and poignant insight into the realities of slavery and the meaning of freedom, Curtis takes readers on a journey that transforms a ‘fra-gile’ 11-year-old boy into a courageous hero.”

Margaret Lazarus Dean was awarded a $25,000 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Prose.

Emery George has been elected full member of PEN American Center for his substantial contribution to the liter- CHRISTOPHER ary community. In December 2001, Emery was elected full member of the Hungarian Academy of Paul Curtis Science.

Rae Gouirand “I’ve been nominated for a 2009 Pushcart, and was awarded a fellowship to spend this August at the Vermont Studio Center. (My manuscript just started circulating for real a year ago, and has been a fi nalist for a handful of fi rst-book prizes, so I’m hopeful that that will take soon—you can keep your fi ngers crossed.) In other news: I’m serving as Writer-in-Residence for the Cache Creek Conservatory (running the only program of its kind in California: I teach grant-funded poetry/practice workshops in a nature preserve), teaching a private nonfi ction workshop, starting my own artisan bookbinding studio (called Open Books) and currently fi nishing my certifi cation at a 200-RYT vinyasa fl ow yoga instructor.”

Matthew Hittinger “It was an exciting spring for three of my projects. The Erotic Postulate was once again a Semifi nalist for the Academy of American Poets’ Walt Whitman Award. Skin Shift was not only a Finalist for the New Issues Poetry Prize but selected by judge Carl Phillips as one of his top 5 manuscripts. A new chapbook based on my time in Jamaica last year (tenta- tively titled Specular Refl ection) was a Finalist in the NMP/DIAGRAM Chapbook Contest, a Finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship, and a Semifi nalist for the Tupelo Press Snowbound Chapbook Award. And I’ve been working on revisions to a new full-length manuscript called Impossible Gotham.” Two poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes: “Mothers Eating Other Mothers’ Young,” from Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts, and “Somersault Precedes Transformation,” from Oranges & Sardines.

Donovan Hohn was one of ten recipients of the 2008 Whiting Writers’ Awards, sponsored by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. The awards, which are $50,000 each have been given an- nually since 1985 to writers of exceptional talent and promise in early career. Donovan Hohn won for nonfi ction. “A contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine, he has published four long essays there: ‘Falling: Confessions of a lapsed forest Christian,’ ‘Moby-Duck, or the synthetic wilderness of childhood,’ ‘A Romance of Rust: Nostalgia, progress, and the meaning of tools,’ and most recently, ‘Through the Open Door: Searching for deadly toys in China’s Pearl River Delta.’ Other work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Agni, The Bedford Reader, and the Italian magazine Internazionale, which translated and reprinted ‘Moby-Duck.’ That essay was also selected for The Best Creative Nonfi ction, Vol. 2 (W. W. Norton.) and will be the centerpiece of his fi rst book, which Viking plans to publish in 2010.”

Howie Kahn won a 2008 James Beard Foundation Award for Magazine Feature Writing About Restau- rants And/Or Chefs for a story he wrote for GQ Magazine “about the progressive ideas and culinary wanderings of the itinerant dinner organizer Jim Denevan.”

12 Laura Kasiscke received the 2008 Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award for outstanding teaching of undergraduates in LSA. The award comes with a prize of $2,500. She was also named a 2008 United States Artist Fel- low. United States Artists is “a grant-making, artist advocacy organization dedicated to supporting America’s fi nest artists working across diverse dis- ciplines. Since its launch in September 2005 with $20 million in seed funding provided by a coalition of leading foundations, the USA Fellows program has been awarding unrestricted $50,000 grants to 50 artists each year.”

Al Kermit was a multiple winner (for the second year in a row) in the Bay Area Poets Coalition Contest in the Maxi-poems division (35 lines maximum). He won fi rst prize for “Birth Song,” second prize for “Needle, Thread,” and third honorable mention for “Pals.” LAURA Deanne Lundin won the $1,000 Dana Award in Short Fiction for “What a Man Can Carry.” Kasischke Sarah Messer won a Harvard University Radcliff e Institute Fellowship for poetry. The annual fellowships, valued at up to $70,000 each, are given to poets, fi ction writers, and creative nonfi ction writers with substantial publications or a current contract for the publication of a book.

David Erik Nelson “My alternate- history novelette, Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate, has been nominated for a Nebula Award. Just in case you aren’t a huge sci-fi fan, the Nebula’s work like this: Throughout the year, members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America recommend pieces to be considered for a Nebula Award. Any piece that gets ten recommendations is added to the ‘preliminary ballot’ (in practice, about a dozen pieces in each category are on the preliminary ballot). SFWA members then rate these, and the top fi ve or six make it to the fi nal ballot. Since there is no way for me to know how many recommendations my story has gotten until the preliminary ballot comes out, I’m beating the underbrush now, in the hopes of fl ushing a few SFWA members interested in a 17,000-word story about a crippled, alcoholic, Confederate veteran teaching clockwork robots to have sex in Utah Territory in 1874 (aside: I’m confi dent that your impressions of the story at this moment are entirely accurate). SFWA members can download a free copy of the novelette from the SFWA website (http://www.sfwa.org/).”

Paula Peterson is the recipient of a $7,000 Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship Award in Fiction. The fellowships alternate yearly between poetry and prose and are given to Illinois residents.

Therese Stanton is one of six emerging women writers singled out for excellence by the Rona Jaff e Foundation and awarded $25,000. “In recognition of the special contributions women writers make to our culture and society, The Rona Jaff e Foundation is giving its fourteenth annual Writers’ Awards under a program that identifi es and supports women writers of exceptional talent. The emphasis is on those in the early stages of their writing careers. This unique program off ers grants to writers of fi ction, creative nonfi ction, and poetry to make writing time available and provide assistance for such specifi c purposes as child care, research and related travel costs.” Therese is completing her fi rst book, Reading and Writing in America, a novella and stories that address the issues of literacy and speech in America in a historical and cultural context.

13 Rosmarie Waldrop Lingos I-IX by Ulf Stolterfoht and translated by Rosmarie has received the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.

Deaths

Ted Solotaroff , who founded The New American Review in 1967, died on August 8 at the age of 80. He was the winner of a Freshman Fiction Award in 1949 and a Minor Essay Award in 1952. The New York Times reported that the review “operated as a kind of open house for fi ction writers and practitioners of the new journalism. A literary journal pro- duced as a paperback book (with the paperback price), its fi rst issue off ered readers the work of 29 writers….Issued three times a year, The New American Review was less a maga- zine with recognizable departments and columnists than a rolling literary anthology that accommodated fi ction writers as diverse as Donald Barthelme, Michael Herr, E. L. Doc- torow, Harold Brodkey and Robert Coover. In its pages, readers encountered Kate Millett on sexual politics, Norman Mailer on Henry Miller, A. Alvarez on Sylvia Plath and Michael Rossman on the spiritual satisfactions of building your own geodesic dome. [Ian] Mc- Ewan, in a blurb he wrote for Mr. Solotaroff ’s essay collection, The Literary Community [1968-2008], said that ‘as the most infl uential editor of his time, he shaped not only the tastes, but the direction of American writing.” After the magazine folded in 1977, “Mr. So- lotaroff went to work as an editor at Harper & Row, now HarperCollins, where he edited Russell Banks, Sue Miller, Max Apple and Bobbie Ann Mason. Ms. Mason, in a telephone interview, called him ‘one of the last great editors,’ someone who ‘cared about every line.’” He was the author of several collections of essays, including The Red Hot Vacuum, as well as the memoirs Truth Comes in Blows and First Loves.

Frank Wolfarth Walsh, who was awarded a Summer Hopwood Drama Award in 1959, died of pancreatic cancer on March 27, 2008 in Pasadena, Florida. He was a librarian and teacher and owned the Old Town Bookstore in Saginaw, then moved to Florida, where he became a sportswriter with particular enthusiasm for baseball. One of his prized pos- sessions was a photo of himself as a little boy with Babe Ruth. He is the author of Shoes of Giants, a collection of columns from Northeast Neighborhood News, which focused on sporting events in and around St. Petersburg, Florida.

Former MFA students will be sad to hear that George Garrett died in his home in Charlottesville, Virginia, on the night of May 25. He was a Professor in the English Dept. in 1982 and 1983 and the Founding Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing. He will be sadly missed.

Special Announcements

Our thanks to all of you who have so generously donated copies of your books to the Hopwood Library. The special display of recent books by Hopwood winners always at- tracts a lot of attention. We appreciate your thoughtfulness very much and enjoy show- ing off your work to visitors.

14 Please help us to keep the Newsletter as accurate and up-to-date as possible by sending news of your publications and activities. Your friends would like to hear about you! You could write, fax (using the English Department’s number, 734-763-3128) or e-mail me: [email protected]. Important: if e-mailing, please type HOPWOOD in the subject line so your message isn’t deleted by mistake. The Hopwood Room’s phone number is 734-764-6296. The cutoff date for listings was December 1. If your information arrived after that, it will be included in our next newsletter which will come out in June. The cutoff date for that will be April 24.

Unfortunately, so many of you have personal websites and blogs that we’ll be unable to make note of them in the future. We’re trying to keep the newsletter to manageable size.

Looking for a writers’ conference, center, residency, or retreat to attend? The Writers’ Conferences and Centers (WC&C) website, www.writersconf.org, provides information about the most established and respected writing organizations in North America and abroad.

The Hopwood Program has a Web page address: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/hop- wood/. Visit the English Department’s MFA Program site at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/ english/grad/mfa.

Best wishes for a happy new year. Do stop by to say hello if you’re visiting Ann Arbor.

Andrea Beauchamp

ATTENTION : U-M UNDERGRADUATE ENGLISH GRADUATES

One of the questions asked most often by undergraduate students either pursuing a degree in English or considering doing so is, “What can I do with a Bachelor of Arts in English?” We know the career possibilities for English concentrators are as numerous as they are varied; therefore, we are currently working on creating a section of the Department of English website to address this question by way of example. Through off ering a number of profi les of our undergraduate alumni—working in a range of fi elds and at various stages of career development—we hope to show the value a degree in English has in achieving rewarding and successful careers. If you are an U-M Undergraduate English Alum and are interested in contributing your story or wish to see what we have collected to date, please see: www.lsa.umich.edu/english/careers

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