Twenty-one winners receive U-M Hopwood Awards

January 29, 2014
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ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan’s Hopwood Awards Program awarded $25,800 to its fall creative writing winners in the Avery and Jule Hopwood Underclassmen Contest.

The Hopwood Awards are the oldest and most prestigious college writing prizes in the country. A total of $11,350 was awarded in the Hopwood Underclassmen Contest and $14,450 in other contests. A ceremony announcing the awards was held this week at U-M’s Rackham Amphitheatre after a poetry reading by Kimiko Hahn, author of “The Unbearable Heart” and “The Narrow Road to the Interior.”

Winners include:

Fiction

  • Julia Byers, a class of 2016 Residential College student from Troy, Mich., for “A Day in the Life,” “All She Hears” and “The Stars Do Not Speak,” $2,000.
  • Pei Hao, a class of 2017 LSA English major from Ann Arbor, for “Underworld,” $800.
  • Molly Reitman, a class of 2016 Residential College creative writing and German major from Northville, Mich., for “Maybe I Miss Home,” $800. She also won $800 in poetry for “I Need You to Listen” and the Roy and Helen Meador Writing Award for $850.

Nonfiction

  • Rachael Lacey, a class of 2016 LSA Program in the Environment major from Orangevale, Calif., for “Four Pieces,” $1,200.
  • Omar Mahmood, a class of 2016 LSA linguistics major from West Bloomfield, Mich., for “I am Urdu and Other Essays,” $1,200.
  • Phoebe Young, a class of 2017 Residential College student from Brooklyn, N.Y., for “Woven Work,” $1,750.

Poetry

  • Madeline Rombes, a class of 2013 LSA English and creative writing major from Ann Arbor, for “We Dance like Wolves,” $1,000.
  • Emma Saraff, a class of 2016 LSA biopsychology, cognition and neuroscience major from Valencia, Spain, for “Poetry: Sonnets for the Woman Undergoing Surgery; Weisberg: Walls, Water; Ribs, Eyes,” $800. She also received the Jeffrey L. Weisberg Memorial Prize in Poetry award for $850.
  • Pei Yuan, a class of 2017 LSA communication studies major from Branchburg, N.J., for “The City,” $1,000.

Jeffrey L. Weisberg Memorial Prize in Poetry

  • Eva Mooney, a class of 2016 LSA English and classical languages major from Wellesley, Mass., for “On Aeneas Setting Out After the War,” $650.

Academy of American Poets Prize
Undergraduate Division

  • Emily Pittinos, a class of 2014 Residential College women’s studies major from Ann Arbor, for “For August,” $100.

Graduate Division

  • Nathaniel Marshall, a class of 2014 MFA student in the Creative Writing Program from Chicago, for “on caskets,” $100.

Michael R. Gutterman Award in Poetry

  • Kenzie Allen, a class of 2014 MFA student in the Creative Writing Program from Ann Arbor, for “Ask Me How It Happened,” $400.
  • David Hornibrook, a class of 2014 MFA student in the Creative Writing Program from Troy, Mich., for “Night Manual,” $600.

Bain-Swiggett Poetry Prize

  • Kelsey Miller, a class of 2014 MFA student in the Creative Writing Program from Cincinnati, for “The Child Receives a Lesson in 1/24th of a Second,” $600.

Roy W. Cowden Memorial Fellowship

  • Jacob Brooks, a class of 2015 LSA philosophy major from Brighton, Mich., $1,500.
  • Madalyn Hochendoner, a class of 2014 Stamps School of Art & Design interarts performance major from Poland, Ohio, $2,000.
  • Erika Nestor, a class of 2015 Residential College English and history major from Dexter, Mich., $2,500.
  • Sonja Pylvainen, a class of 2015 LSA English major from West Bloomfield, Mich., $1,500.
  • Juliana Roth, a class of 2015 LSA English major from Nyack, N.Y., $1,500.
  • Yasin Ibn Abdul-Muqit, a class of 2015 LSA English major from Coldwater, Mich., $1,500.

The awards are supported by a bequest from Avery Hopwood, a 1905 U-M graduate who was the most commercially successful Broadway playwright of the 1920s, and Jule Hopwood, his mother.