In Rackham Auditorium, 25 students were awarded $120,500 in
prize money during the Hopwood Graduate and Undergraduate Awards
Ceremony yesterday. The winners were chosen based on writing
submitted to the Hopwood program in February. The entries were
judged at the local level before qualified work was sent on to
national judges. The first Hopwoods were given out during the
1930-31 school year, and since then more than $2 million has been
awarded. Previous winners include Arthur Miller, Frank O’Hara
and Nancy Willard.
One of this year’s recipients of the Hopwood Undergraduate
Poetry Award was RC freshman Mariama Lockington, who said that she
was surprised to win. She only entered after her poetry instructor,
Ken Mikolowski, suggested it. “I’ve been writing poetry
for a long time; it is a big part of my life. I’m really
excited.” Commenting about her future, she said, “I
hope to continue to write from the heart about topics that are
close to me, and continue to look at the world through open eyes
and not limit myself.”
The Hopwood program also hosts 19 other writing and fellowship
contests. Through these contests an additional $22,975 was bestowed
this year to 14 undergraduate and graduate students, including some
Hopwood winners.
Hopwood director and English Prof. Nicholas Delbanco handed out
the honors, and novelist Mary Gordon (“Seeing Through
Places”) gave a lecture titled “Flannery
O’Conner’s Kiss.” Gordon spoke about her own
experiences as they relate to the letters of the famed author.
Hopwood award winners
Drama and screenplay awards
- Nat Topping
- Brian Lobel
- Daniel Rivas
- Jordan Bohy
- Carolyn Tourner
Novel awards
- Daniel Rivas
- Travis Holland
- Karen E. Outen
- Irene J. Hahn
Essayist awards
- n Esohe Osai
- Elesia K. Bennett
- David Stanley Plastrik
Short fiction awards
- Steven A. Dabrowski
- Will Dunlap
- Madeline Kotowicz
Poetry awards
- Gabrielle Lensch
- Mariama J. Lockington
- David Stanley Plastrik
- Adina Schoem