January, 2015
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HopwoodThe Newsletter Vol. LXXVI, 1 http://hopwood.lsa.umich.edu/ HOPWOOD NICHOLAS DELBANCO .................................... JANUARY, 2015 Nicholas Delbanco, Director of the Hopwood Awards as a fundraiser, not only for the MFA Program, which he Program and Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor directed for 15 years, but also for the Hopwood Awards of English, will retire next May, a decidedly bitter-sweet Program. Through his efforts, we were able to increase the occasion for his students, colleagues, and especially me, as number of contests and prizes and also to defray much I have worked very happily with him for over 27 years. He of the administrative cost with an annual gift of $50,000 arrived at the University of Michigan in 1985 in order to direct from the Provost’s Office. He seems to know everyone in the newly constituted MFA in Writing Program; he became the literary world and because of his friendship with so the Director of the Hopwood Awards Program two years many writers, he was able to bring distinguished speakers thereafter, and has served in that position since. He has had for the awards—Richard Ford, Louise Glück, Hopwood a truly remarkable career. He published his first book at the winners Lawrence Kasdan and Edmund White, Maxine age of 23 and since then has published twenty-seven books Kumin, Grace Paley, and Yusef Komunyaka, to name just a of fiction and non-fiction. His most recent novels are The few. And after the ceremonies, Nick and Elena hosted many Count of Concord and the revised one-volume Sherbrookes; his most recent works of non-fiction are The Art of Youth: Crane, Carrington, Gershwin, and the Nature of First Acts as 3 Publications by 10 Corrections well as the just-published Dear Wizard: The Letters of Nicholas Hopwood Winners 11 News & Notes Delbanco and Jon Manchip White. In January, 2015, his new 3 -books and chapbooks 12 Awards & Honors novel, The Years, will appear. As editor he has compiled the 4 -articles and essays 14 Deaths work of, among others, John Gardner and Bernard Malamud. 5 -reviews 15 Special Announcements His textbooks include The Sincerest Form: Writing Fiction 6 -fiction by Imitation (2004) and Craft & Voice (with Alan Cheuse) in 7 -poetry Editor Andrea Beauchamp 2012. Among his awards are the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial 9 -drama performances Design Hannah Yung Fellowship and, twice, the National Endowment for the and publications Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. He has served as Chair 10 -film/video/audio of the Fiction Panel for the National Book Awards and as a judge of the Pulitzer Prize. He has been unusually successful INSIDE Photo credit: Matt Valentine Photo credit: Annika Lee Photo credit: Matt Valentine PETER CHANG-RAE EAVAN HO DAVIES LEE BOLAND wonderfully convivial evenings at their home, where everyone (2000). His work has appeared in Harpers, The Atlantic Monthly, felt included in the conversation—thus bearing out George The Paris Review, The Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, among Garrett’s comment when Nick was being recruited that bringing others, and his short fiction has been widely anthologized, the Delbancos to Ann Arbor would certainly enliven the social including selections for Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards 1998 scene. He edited several anthologies of Hopwood Lectures and, and Best American Short Stories 1995, 96 and 2001. In 2003 Granta for the 75th anniversary, a collection of stories and fiction by magazine named him among its twenty Best Young British former winners. He was even able to get two of Avery Hopwood’s Novelists, and in 2008 he received the PEN/Malamud award for plays, The Best People and The Gold Diggers, produced by the excellence in the short story. He is on the faculty of the MFA Theater Department and they were actually quite delightful. A Program in Creative Writing, the Helen Zell Writers’ Program. truly gifted teacher, he helped many of you shape your work for publication. On a personal note, working with Nick was always The Hopwood Underclassmen Awards Ceremony will be held on fun and enlightening. Any book I was reading he had already read Tuesday, January 27, at 3:30 p.m. in the Rackham Amphitheatre. and could discuss in detail. All of us in the Hopwood Program Chang-rae Lee will give a fiction reading following the wish him a very happy retirement and look forward to reading announcement of the awards. Mr. Lee is a Korean American many future works. novelist and a professor of creative writing at Princeton University. He is the author of five novels, most recently On Such a Full Sea On December 4, there was a symposium in his honor in December (Riverhead, 2014), which is set in a dystopian Baltimore. Native with a conversation with Charles Baxter and two panels, “What Speaker, his first novel, won the prestigious PEN/Hemingway We Know” with Miles Harvey and Hopwood winners Margaret Award, and A Gesture Life won the Asian American Literary Award. Lazarus Dean and Jesmyn Ward, moderated by Donovan In 2011, he was a awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for The Hohn, and “Write the Future,” with Hopwood winners Valerie Surrendered and was a finalist for a Pulitzer. Laken, William Lychack, and Porter Shreve, moderated by Jeremiah Chamberlin. The Graduate and Undergraduate Hopwood Awards Ceremony will be held on Wednesday, April 22 at 3:30 p.m. in the Rackham The new Director of the Hopwood Program is Peter Ho Davies. Amphitheatre. A lecture by Irish poet Eavan Boland will follow He is the author of the novel The Welsh Girl (2007) and the story the announcement of the awards. She is the author of eleven collections The Ugliest House in the World (1997) and Equal Love books of poetry, including Night Feed, Domestic Violence, In a Time 2 of Violence (for which she received the Lannan Literary Award), Against Love Poetry (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), and New Collected Poems. Her most recent book is a collection of essays, A Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet, which received the 2012 PEN Award. She has been awarded six honorary degrees, including ones from University College and Trinity College in Dublin, and Colby College and Bowdoin College in the U.S. She is the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University. The Awards for the 77th Summer Hopwood Contest and the Marjorie Rapaport Award in Poetry were presented by Nicholas Delbanco on September 25. The judges for the contest were Leslie Stainton and Joe Matuzak (Hopwood winner). And the winners were: The Summer Hopwood Contest Screenplay: Eugene Jehl, Jr., $800 Nonfiction: Amnabel Karoub, $1,800 Fiction: Jeffrey Stehlin, $1,800 Poetry: Gavin Gao, $800; Hannah Bates, $1,000 The Marjorie Rapaport Award in Poetry: Andrew Geller, $550; Wes Holkeboer, $550 Publications by Hopwood Winners* Books and Chapbooks Scott Beal Wait ‘Til You Have Real Problems, poetry, Dzanc Books, 2014. Diane Cook Man V. Nature: Stories, Harper Books, October 2014. Christopher Paul Curtis Mr. Chickee’s Funny Money, Yearling, 2007; Mr. Chickee’s Messy Mission, Yearling, 2008; Elijah of Buxton, Scholastic Paperbacks, 2009; The Mighty Miss Malone, Yearling, 2013; The Madman of Piney Woods, Scholastic Press, 2014. Elizabeth K. Gordon Love Cohoes, poetry, Crandall, Dostie and Douglass Books, May 2014. Here is a video of her performing a poem from the (won as Kathryn Gordon) collection: www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG_k7Vi4OP. Neil Gordon You’re a Big Girl Now, a novel, Picador, UK, 2014. Picador also republished Neil’s first three novels in uniform edition. Matthew Hittinger The Erotic Postulate, poetry, Sibling Rivalry Press, September 2014. “There are three variant covers from which you can choose (or collect all three!), featuring paintings by the talented Provincetown-based artist Christopher Sousa. You can also purchase the book as part of SRP’s fall subscription where you will get the three fall titles for $30 in a bundle: my collection along with Stephen S. Mills’ A History of the Unmarried and Brent Calderwood’s The God of Longing.” Laura Kasischke The Infinitesimals, poetry, Copper Canyon, 2014. X. J. Kennedy A Hoarse Half-human Cheer, a novel, Curtis Brown Unlimited, New York. (Paperback and e-book), 2014; Fits of Concision: collected poems of six or fewer lines, Grolier Poetry Book Shop, Cambridge, Mass., 2014. Bruce Lack Service, winner of the Walt McDonald First Book Contest in Poetry, forthcoming from Texas Tech University Press, 2015. Nate Marshall Wild Hundreds, poetry, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize and forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2015. * Assume date unknown if no date is indicated. 3 Chris McCormick Desert Boys, a novel in stories, forthcoming from Picador. Andrew Newberg Holding Kryptonite: Truth, Justice and America’s First Superhero, McNally-Jackson, 2014 and as an e-book across platforms. “After graduating with my MFA in Fiction from Columbia, I took about 6 years to finish this non-fiction book. In short, I was put into touch with a woman who found documents in the trash that chronicle the first ten turbulent years of Superman’s creators—Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster with Detective Comics. The book takes the reader through these never revealed documents and correspondence that was used to reclaim Siegel & Shuster’s rights that they sold to DC for $130. It was the first of many lawsuits to follow...but it was the first.” Marge Piercy The Cost of Lunch, Etc., stories, PM Press, 2014. This is Marge’s only collection of short stories and the 43rd book in her long and very impressive career. Paula Rabinowitz American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street, Princeton University Press, 2014; with Cristina Giocelli, edited Exchanging Clothes: Habits of Being 2 and Fashioning the Nineteenth Century: Habits of Being 3, University of Minnesota Press, 2014; the fourth volume of this series is in production.