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Hopwood
The
Newsletter Vol. LXIX, 1
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/hopwood/
January, 2008
Inside:
HOPWOOD
We were thrilled that Anne Stevenson was doubly honored this fall. In October, she became the
second recipient of the Neglected Masters Award of $50,000 from the Poetry Foundation. “The award
brings renewed critical attention to the life’s work of a significant but under-recognized American poet.
Stevenson was born in England of American parents in 1933. She was brought up in New England
and in Ann Arbor, Michigan, graduating with a Major Hopwood Award for poetry from the University
of Michigan in 1954. Her many books of poems include Reversals (Wesleyan, 1969), Correspondences
(Oxford University Press, 1974), The Fiction-Makers (Oxford University Press, 1985), and Granny Scarecrow
(Bloodaxe Books, 2000). Poems1955–2005, published by Bloodaxe Books, collects 50 years of her poetry,
written during a full and much-traveled life in America, England,
Scotland, and Wales. She is also the author of Bitter Fame: A Life of
Sylvia Plath (Penguin, 1990) and recently of Five Looks at Elizabeth
Bishop (Bloodaxe Books, 2006). In 2002 she was the inaugural
recipient of the Northern Rock Writers Award. In 2003, John Lucas
edited a 70th-birthday Festschrift in her honor, The Way You Say
the World. Her latest collection of poems, Stone Milk, will appear
from Bloodaxe Books in the autumn of 2007. Stevenson has three
children and lives with her husband, Peter Lucas, in Durham,
England, and in North Wales. On April 1, 2008, The Library of
America will publish Anne Stevenson: Selected Poems in conjunction
with the Neglected Masters Award. This will be her first poetry
publication in the United States in over two decades.” Then the
November 8 New York Times announced: “The American lyric poet
Anne Stevenson, 74, who has lived in Britain for more than 40
years, was named the winner yesterday of the $200,000 lifetime
achievement award of the Lannan Foundation of Santa Fe, N.M.”
The Lannan Literary Awards and Fellowships were established in
1989 to honor both established and emerging writers whose work
AnnE StevenSon
Former Hopwood Award winner and recent recipient of the
Neglected Masters Award and a lifetime achievement award of
the Lannan Foundation
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Publications by Hopwood Winners
-books and chapbooks
-articles and essays
-reviews
-fiction
-poetry
-audio
-film
-drama, readings and performances
News Notes
Awards and Honors
Deaths
Special Announcements
Continued, page 2
Editor Andrea Beauchamp
Design Anthony Cece

& Charles
Johnson
George
Saunders
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is of exceptional quality. Over the last 19 years, Lannan Foundation, through its Awards and
Fellowships program, has awarded 171 writers and poets more than $13 million. The awards
recognize writers who have made significant contributions to English-language literature.
The fellowships recognize writers of distinctive literary merit who demonstrate potential
for continued outstanding work. And, lastly, she is the recipient of the Aiken Taylor Award
in Modern American Poetry from Sewanee Review. Our warmest congratulations to Anne
on these marvelous awards.
The Hopwood Underclassmen Awards Ceremony, at which the winners of the fall
term writing contests are announced, will be held on Tuesday, January 29 at 3:30 in
the Rackham Amphitheatre. George Saunders—author of The Braindead Megaphone,
Pastoralia, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, In Persuasion Nation, and the children’s books
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil and The Very Persistent Gappers of Frith—will
give a fiction reading following the announcement of the awards. The Graduate and
Undergraduate Hopwood Awards Ceremony will be held at 3:30 on Wednesday, April
16, in the Rackham Amphitheatre. The Hopwood Lecturer will be Charles Johnson,
author of Middle Passage and three other novels, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and two
other short story collections, and many nonfiction books, including Africans in America:
America’s Journey Through Slavery and, most recently, Turning the Wheel: Essays on
Buddhism and Writing. There will be a reception after each ceremony in the Rackham
Assembly Hall. You are cordially invited to these events.
Awards for the 70 th Annual Summer Hopwood Awards Ceremony were presented by Prof.
Michael Byers, himself a former winner, on September 20. The judges for the contest
were Paul Barron (Hopwood Award winner) and Jennifer Michaels. And the winners
were:
Fiction: Joya M. McCrory, $800; Paul Fiehler, $1,000
Poetry: Claire Smith, $1,750
The Marjorie Rapaport Award in Poetry: Melissa Kim, $300; Sarah M. Sala, $500

Jerome Badanes
John U. Bacon
Mary Beth Barber
Steven Bluestone
Ken Fifer
Richard Goodman
Elizabeth K. Gordon
Alyson Hagy
Diane Haithman
Cynthia Haven
Joshua Henkin
Matthew Hittinger
Randa Jarrar
X. J. Kennedy
Karyna McGlynn
Nami Mun
Matthew Rohrer
Publications by
Hopwood Winners *
Long Live a Hunger to Feed Each Other, poems, introduction by Hopwood Award winner
Nancy Willard, Open City Books, 2007. Mr. Badanes died at the age of 58 in 1995.
with Bo Schembechler, Bo’s Lasting Lessons: The Legendary Coach Teaches the Timeless
Fundamentals of Leadership, Grand Central/Business Plus, 2007.
with Terry Schreiber, Acting: Advanced Techniques for the Actor, Director, and Teacher,
foreword by Edward Norton, Allworth Press, New York, 2005.
The Flagrant Dead, poems, Mercer University Press, 2007.
After Fire, poems, March Street Press, 2007.
The Soul of Creative Writing, Transaction Publishers, forthcoming Spring 2008.
Walk with Us: Triplet Boys, Their Teen Parents & Two White Women who Tagged Along, www.
walkwithus.info, 2007.
Snow, Ashes, novel, Graywolf Press, 2007.
with Doug Meckelson, The Elder Wisdom Circle Guide for a Meaningful Life, nonfiction,
Penguin/Plume, 2007. Diane is an arts staff writer at the Los Angeles Times.
Czeslaw Milosz: Memories and Recollections, forthcoming from University Press of
Mississippi. She is the editor of Czeslaw Milosz: Interviews, University Press of Mississippi,
2006, and interviewed Timothy Steele in Three Poets in Conversation, Between the Lines,
2006.
Matrimony, a novel, Pantheon, 2007.
Pear Slip, poetry, Spire Press, 2007; Narcissus Resists, poetry, winner of the Beauty/Truth
Press 2007 Chapbook Competition. Matthew says, “There will be a limited edition run of
a physical copy of the book with full cover art, etc., and the e-book will look exactly like
the physical book, but will have clickable, interactive links, etc.” www.beautytruthpoetry.
com/publications.html.
A Map of Home, forthcoming from Other Press in Fall, 2008.
Peeping Tom’s Cabin: Comic Verse 1928-2008, BOA, American Poets Continuum Series,
2007; In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus: New & Selected Poems 1955-2007, Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2007.
Scorpionica, poems, New Michigan Press, Fall 2007.
Miles from Nowhere, a linked story collection, forthcoming from Penguin/Riverhead.
Rise Up, poetry, Wave Books, 2007.
Books and Chapbooks
* Assume date unknown if no date is indicated.
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Jerome M. Segal
Sherman J. Silber, M.D.
William Simpson
Claire S. Smith
Peter J. Stanlis
Laurence W. Thomas
Rosmarie Waldrop
Edmund White
Dallas E. Wiebe
Nancy Willard
Sven Birkerts
Barry Garelick
Richard Goodman
Rachel Harkai
Joshua Henkin
Howie Kahn
Elizabeth Kostova
Martin A. Lee
Joseph’s Bones: Understanding the Struggle Between God and Mankind in the Bible,
Riverhead Books, 2007.
How to Get Pregnant, the classic guide to overcoming fertility, completely revised and
updated, Little, Brown and Co., 2007.
The Prince: The Secret Story of the World’s Most Intriguing Royal, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan,
with forewords by Nelson Mandela and Margaret Thatcher, Regan HarperCollins, 2006.
with Jamie S. Smith and Merle S. Elliott, Roots Grow Backwards: Visions in Midwestern Poetry
& Photographs by the Women of a Naperville, Illinois, Family, Jamecle Publishing, 2007.
Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher, ISI Books, 2007.
Homage to Carl Rakosi, poems, Leadfoot Press, 2007, available for $15 from Mr. Thomas at
147 Greenside, Ypsilanti, MI 48197.
translated Lingos I-IX by Ulf Stolterfoht, poetry, Burning Deck Press, 2007.
Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel, Ecco, 2007.
The Sayings of Abraham NofzingerII: An Enchiridion for the Pious, Copyright Dallas E. Wiebe,
2007.
The Flying Bed, illustrated by John Thompson, children’s literature, Scholastic/Blue Sky
Press, 2007.
Articles and Essays
“The Thinker in the Garden,” AGNI #65, 2007; “The Walk,: AGNI #66, 2007.
“Singapore Math: Simple or Complex?” with John Hoven, Educational Leadership, LXV, 3,
November 2007; “It Works for Me: An Exploration of Traditional Math.” It’s a three-part
article, located at: http://ednews.org/articles/19316/1/It-Works-for-Me—An Explorationof-Traditional-Math-Part-1/Page1.html.
Links to Parts II and II are at the end of the
respective preceding sections.
“The Man in White,” Harvard Review, Fall 2007; “Using the Techniques of Fiction to Make
Your Creative Nonfiction Even More Creative,” The Writers Chronicle, October/November
2007.
“The Silence of Objects,” Oleander Review, University of Michigan, Issue #1, Fall 2007.
“In Defense of MFA Programs,” Poets & Writers Magazine, November/December 2007.
Two feature articles in GQ magazine: “Porn Star,” a profile of the painter John Currin, April
2007, and “The Wandering Chief,” a profile of the vagabond dinner organizer and sand
artist Jim Denevan, June 2007.
Interviewed by Sarah Sala, Oleander Review, University of Michigan, Issue #1, Fall 2007.
with Pat McCartney, “The Dis-Implementation of Prop 215,” O’Shaughnessy’s: The Journal
of Cannabis in Clinical Practice, Winter/Spring 2007.

Hank Meijer
Derek Mong
David Erik Nelson
Marge Piercy
Bart Planenga
Sherman J. Silber
Fritz Swanson
Howard R. Wolf
Bart Plantenga
Jess Row
Edmund V. White
Jessica Apple
Max Apple
John Patrick Bishop
“Michigan and Fuller,” in Thin Ice: Growing Up in Grand Rapids, edited by Gordon Olson
and Reiner Van Til, Wm/.B. Erdmans, 2007.
“Dramatic Custom-Built Spanish Colonial,” Cream City Review, forthcoming Spring 2008.
A piece on Pep-Squeak, Avery Hopwood’s monkey, who inherited a $10,000 trust fund
after Hopwood’d death, Ann Arbor Observer, April 2007.
Foreword to Hannah Senesh, Her Life and Diary, The First Complete Edition, Preface by
Eliot Senesh, Paberback Edition, Jewish Lights Publishing, 2007.
Liner notes for “Suicidal Yodels” by Erica Stucky, Traumton Records, for “Birdsong From
Inside an Egg” by Luc Houtkamp and the POW Ensemble, for “Alawan~Siquawini~Spenki,”
Pierre Belouin and various artists on Optical Sound; “Encounters with Allen Ginsberg:
Fame and Terror, Beauty and Protest, Power and Pleading,” poetry.about.com; “Radio
Memories: Magnificent Seven,” for the Sonorous Landscapes/Cultural Viewpoints
project at Errantbodies.org; “Memories of Lydia Tomkiw RIP,” Algebra Suicide MySpace;
contributor to “Ow/Wow 2006: The Best of Amsterdam” in Amsterdam Weekly; Interview
“The Yodel: Not Just A Cream-Filled-Snack-Cake” in College Music Journal.; an essay in an
anthology of articles on Jimmie Rodgers, forthcoming from the Rock N Roll Museum
(Cleveland, Ohio) and Rounder Books.
with Oswald M. Petrucco, Sarah L. Chamberlain, et. al., “Live birth following day surgery
reversal of female sterilization in women older than 40 years: a realistic option in
Australia?” Medical Journal of Australia, 3 September 2007.
“This is Neil Greenberg. Neil Draws Maps,” Esopus Magazine #8, Summer 2007. This is a
profile of the outsider artist, along with Fritz’s photos of him working. “The Way We Get
More,” Slash Magazine #6, Summer 2007, a profile of New Yorker cartoonist Jason Polan.
“Autobibliography, A Place In Time: On Shaping a Collection (1971-1006),” Lifewriting
Annual, ed. Thomas Smith, Penn State/Abington, PA, 2007.
Reviews
A review of Serge Gainsbourg’s film “Je T’Aime…Moi Non Plus,” Amsterdam Weekly.
A review of The Imposture by Benjamin Markovits, The New York Times Book Review, May
13, 2007; “Haitian Fathers,” a review of Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat,” NYTBR,
September 9, 2007.
“Sons and Brothers,” a review of The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1855-1872, edited by
Pierre A. Walker and Greg W. Zacharias, and four other books about Henry and William
James, The New York Review of Books, October 11, 2007.
Fiction
“One Act,” The Southern Review, Autumn 2007.
“The Jew of Home Depot,” The Hopkins Review, Issue 1, 2007.
“Intruder,” The Southern Review, Autumn 2007.
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Cyan James
Rattawut Lapcharoensap
Taemi Lim
David Erik Nelson
Celeste Ng
Bart Plantenga
Sharon Pomerantz
Cara Spindler
and David Erik Nelson
Ben Stroud
Fritz Swanson
Melanie Rae Thon
Edmund White
Geoffrey Bankowski
Jason Bredle
E. G. Burrows
Victoria Chang
Lyn Coffin
Ken Fifer
Gail Gilliland
Matthew Hittinger
“Tireless on the Way of Cain (novel excerpt),” Oleander Review, University of Michigan,
Issue #1, Fall 2007.
“Valets,” Granta: Best of Young American Novelists 2, issue 97, 2007.
“Eating an Elephant,” Crab Orchard Review, XII, 1, Winter/Spring 2007.
“Bay,” The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Del Rey, 2007.
“B&B,” forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Spring/Summer 2008.
An excerpt from his novel Beer Mystic in Chanticleer (Scotland) and from his novel Paris
Sex Tete at Parisiana.com.
“Like Graceland,” The Missouri Review, Spring 2007.
“You Were Neither Hot Nor Cold, but Lukewarm, and So I Spit You Out,” The Best of Lady
Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Del Rey, 2007.
“Borden’s Meat Biscuit,” forthcoming is Subtropics 5, January 2008.
“For the Love of Paul Bunyan,” in Best American Fantasy, 2007, edited by Jeff and Ann
Vandermeer, Prime, 2007.
“Niña Pérdida: Love Song for Iris,” Five Points, XI, 3, 2007.
“A Good Sport,” The Yale Review, July 2007.
Poetry
“Sunday To Watch Horses,” “Saving All the Waitresses,” The Southern Review, Summer 2007.
“Apocalypse,” “The Year of Living Regrettably,” TriQuarterly 128, 2007/
“Naming the Ghost,” “Night Is Coming,” Freshwater, 2007.
“Seven Infidelities,” “Dear Professor,” Tin House: Evil, VIII, 3, 2007; “Ars Poetica as Birdfeeder
and Hummingbird,” New England Review, XXVIII, 2, 2007.
translated “What Is Prohibited,” “Black Picture,” “Snowflakes,” “What Are We?” and
“Screaming” by Jirí Orten, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 2007. The contributor’s
note says; “Lyn Coffin is the author of seven books of poems and translations from
Russian and Czech. She is a member of Effective Arts, a professional acting troupe
based in Seattle, and was a featured speaker last year at the World Congress of Poets in
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Her next book is a translation of White Picture, a book-length
collection of Jirí Orten’s poems.”
“98 th and Lex,” California Quarterly, Summer 2007.
“Swimming for the Dead,” Comstock Review, XXI, Fall 2007; “Elegy for a Murdered Girl,”
Tipton Poetry Journal , #6, Summer 2007; “The Bell Boy,” Driftwood, Spring 2007; “’The
Repentant Magdalene’ by de La Tour,” Broken Bridge, Spring 2007.
“Lamp,” “The Problematic Pear,” Beauty/Truth: A Journal of Ekphrasic Poetry, Fall/Winter
2007.

Patricia Hooper
Tung-Hui Hu
Laura Kasischke
Josie Kearns
X. J. Kennedy
Lynne Knight
Laurence Lieberman
Gregory Loselle
Karyna McGlynn
Hank Meijer
Jennifer Metsker
Derek Mong
Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren
“At the Equinox,” Shenandoah, LVII, 1, Spring 2007.
“Year of Following People,” “Sunt Lacrimae Rerun,” Meridian, May 2007; “Thumb, Throat,
Affadavit,” Guernica, 2007.
“Three Prose Poems: Tearduct, Riddle, Riddle,” New Letters: A Magazine of Writing and Art,
LXXIII 2, 2007; “War with Toy Soldiers,” The Iowa Review, XXXVII, 1, Spring 2007; “Egypt,”
Oleander Review, University of Michigan, Issue #1, Fall 2007.
“Prototype,” “The Letters,” forthcoming from The MacGuffin Reader, 2007.
“Blues for Oedipus,” “God’s Obsequies,” Poetry, July/August 2007; “Innocent Times,”
Columbia, Spring 2007; “Departure,” “Some Japanese Beetles,” Measure II, 2007; “The
Devil’s Counsel, Salamander, XII, 2, 2007.
was interviewed by Rachel Dacus (http://www.umbrellajournal.com/summer2007/
prose/Interview.html) as the featured poet in Umbrella (http://www.umbrellajournal.com/
summer2007/poetry/LynneKnight.html): “Body That I Bring to You in Winter,” “Day Two
of the Surge after Renoir’s Fleurs dans un vase,” “The Truth About Pomegranates after
Chen Chun’s Pomegranate and Mallow,” “Every Fifteen Seconds,” “Room for My Daughter,”
“Another Problem for Ethics 101,” “The Party,” “The Canvas.”
“Relics of the Bonfire,” Five Points, XI, 3, 2007; “Granddad and the Humpbacks,” The Hudson
Review, Autumn 2007.
“The Boat-Hoist De Profundis,” Sow’s Ear, Summer 2007; “Magdalene Penitent, after de la
Tour,” The Comstock Review, Summer 2007.
“Her head was blacker than coal, she didn’t mind,” Lit, Winter/Spring 2008; “How to
Delicately Detect I Lied About the Dosing,” Diagram, Fall 2007; “Hot Button God, Move
Your Thumb….,” “But to find, he said with a recondite sneer…,” Quarterly West, 2007; “[In
a landscape, the color of bleached limes],” “[Sometime in the night a naked man passes],”
Forklift, Ohio, Summer 2007; “It wasn’t phenomenal, she followed the phone poles up &
up,” The Concher, 2007.
“Comfort Inn,” selected by Billy Collins to be included in Voices, a collection from the 2007
Dyer-Ives Poetry Competition.
“In Memory of Derrida During the Antique Road Show and Nature,” Oleander Review,
University of Michigan, Issue #1, Fall 2007; “Poltergeist,” “Broken-Down Georgic,” The
Southern Review, Autumn 2007/
“Fellini Sestina: Roma,” Third Coast, Spring 2007; “Apodosis and the Ocean Waves,”
ReDivider, XXIV, 2, Spring 2007; “Coccyx—“ and “Octopus,” The Southeast Review, XXV,
1, Spring 2007; “Blackout,” Verse Daily, www.versedaily.org/2007/blackout.shtml, March
13, 2007; The Somatosensory Cortex,” “Blackout,” Court Green 4, Winter 2007; “Recoil,”
The Missouri Review Online, www.missourireview.com, Poem of the Week, May 26, 2007;
“Flying is Everything I’d Imagined Now and More,” “Morning, Noon, and Night,” Pleiades,
forthcoming 2008; “Equivalents,” The Kenyon Review, forthcoming Spring 2008; “Mia,”
TriQuarterly, forthcoming Winter 2008; translations: “His Doctor, His Fever,” “A Priest
to Paul Russus,” “Phillip Nerius Moderates Ambition with Two Words,” Artful Dodge,
forthcoming Winter 2008.
“Derrière la Scène,” “Before I Knew How to Write,” Oleander Review, University of Michigan,
Issue #1, Fall 2007.
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Marge Piercy
Marc J. Sheehan
Anne Stevenson
Sara Talpos
Laurence W. Thomas
Douglas Woody Woodsum
Kristen Lems
Tina Datsko de Sánchez
Nigel Gearing
“January the First,” Nexus, XLIII, 1, 2007; “Envying the weeds,” “Don’t throw away that
worn jacket,” International Poetry Review, Spring 2007; “Embroideries,” “Zaftik,” “We wait,”
Prairie Schooner, Spring 2007; “A river runs past it,” Blue Collar Review, Winter 2006-2007;
“Tuesday’s stepchild,” Blue Collar Review, Spring 2007; “The happy man,” Poesis, IX, 2007;
“Becoming mobile in Mobile,” Whatever Remembers Us: An Anthology of Alabama Poetry,
Negative Capability Press, 2007; “Card on the table,” Earth’s Daughters, LXXI, 2007;
“Ingestion,” Ward 6, No. 2, Summer 2007, online; “Yom Kippur, late afternoon,” Midstream,
September/October 2007; Online Magazines: “Blue Mojo,” Trivia, Resurrection Issue,
V, Spring 2007; “Season without flowers or fruit,” “Evenings in the family,” “Going to
seed,” Poetry Porch, 2007; “Timeless, The Cortland Review #36, Summer 2007; “Sleep the
adversary,” “The last diaspora,” Barnwood, June 2007.
“Vernal Equinox Near the 45th Parallel,” Prairie Schooner, Winter 2005; “The Musical
Fountain,” “Per Se,” Southern Poetry Review, 43:2; “A Post-Election Walk Along the Lake,” The
Strange Fruit, June 2006; “With Love From Galveston, Texas,” Water Stone, Fall 2007.
“Inheriting My Grandmother’s Nightmare,” Poetry, May 2007.
“Jellies,” Crab Orchard Review, XII, 1, Winter/Spring 2007.
“Debauchery on the Couch,” Thirty-Seven Cents, June 2007; “A Dark House,” Blue Unicorn,
June 2007; “Continuum,” Thirty-Seven Cents, 2007.
“First Pig,” Rattle: Poetry for the 21 st Century, Summer 2007.
Audio
“I am happy to report that “Equality Road,” my 26 song double CD containing albums “We
Will Never Give Up” and “In the Out Door,” is now ready to sell! You can order
it right here: http://cdbaby.com/cd/kristinlems6.”
Film
wrote and produced a short film, Robinson, that was directed by José Sánchez-H. It had
its world premiere at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival in Hollywood on
October 13. “Robinson is part of a series of experimental films using spoken word to tell
the story of 19 th century revolutionary Símon Bolívar. Two of the films aired on Sundance
Channel and one received the Audience Award for “Best Short Film” at the Iberoamerican
Film Festival in Montreal.” She was also the screenwriter for La Paz, a political thriller
directed by her husband, which advanced to the Semifinal Round of the 2007 Nicholl
Fellowships in Screenwriting. It is one of 108 entries out of 5050 to make the cut in this
competition sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Drama, Performances and Publications
adapted Alain-Fournier’s novel Le Grand Meaulnes into a play of the same name. The
novel is a much-loved French classic set in the era just before World War I. The play,
which received wonderful reviews, was produced by Quantum Theatre and directed by
Di Trevis, and it was performed at Hartford Acres in Pittsburgh August 2-26. Hopwood
winner (and former Michigan Daily Arts Writer) Sasha Higgins acted in the play and the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review noted: “It’s easy to understand how Sasha Higgins’ Yvonne de
Galais instantaneously captures Meaulnes’ -- and our -- affections.”

Bart Plantenga
Brian Spitulnik
Dean Bakopoulos
Gabe Burnstein
Margaret Dean and
Christopher Hebert
Francesca Delbanco
Benjamin Paloff
Jess Row
Dennis Harvey
Derek Mong
Marge Piercy
Bart Plantenga
Margaret Reges
A broadcast of the radio play version of his short story “Wet Dreams of the Pope” on
Dutch public radio, VPRO’s “Café Sonore”; “Moroscopy,” a 1-hour Audio collage, on VPRO’s
“Radio 6.”
A musical based on his Hopwood Award-winning story, “A Good Boy,” was produced
at the U of M’s Musical Theatre Studio I and performed in the Arthur Miller Theatre
December 6-9, 2007. Brian wrote the book and lyrics, the music was by Sam Davis,
musical direction by Cynthia Kortman Westphal, and it was directed by Linda Goodrich.
News
& Notes
Babies Galore!
and Amanda Okopski announce the birth of Amos Gregor Bakopoulos, born on October
15 and weighing 9 pounds, 4 ounces.
and Darcie Dennigan announce the birth of their daughter, Remy, on March 17, 2007.
announce the birth of their son, Elliott James Hebert-Dean, on May 1, weighing in at 7
pounds 13 ounces.
and Nick Stoller announce the birth of Penelope Aurora Stoller on October 5. She
weighed 6 lbs. 10 ounces.
and Megan Thomas announce the arrival of their daughter, Breina Filomena Paloff on
November 6. She weighed 6 pounds 11 ounces and measured 20 inches long.
and Sonya Posmentier announced the birth of their daughter, Mina Bhatia Posmentier
Row, on June 8, 2007.
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writes that he is “still writing reviews and features primarily about film and theatre,
primarily for Variety and the San Francisco Bay Guardian, as well as a few strictly on-line
outlets.”
taught composition and creative writing at SUNY Albany in the fall.
served on the NEA Panel for Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction. “I read manuscripts all
summer and spent the first week of September in Washington, DC.”
A lecture “Mike Johnson: Black Country Yodeler, Outsider” in De Player in Rotterdam and
NS16 in Tilburg as part of the Dada publication party for Big Mag, Rotterdam; a lecture
“Some Weird Stories About Yodeling” at the Amsterdam Literary Festival. “I am currently
working on a compilation called Black and Blue Yodelin’ for the excellent label Trikont
and will include (hopefully!) blues, jazz, and rock and soul yodeling as well as African and
other black yodeling.”
is studying in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She was awarded an Iowa Arts Fellowship.
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10
Frank Beaver
Will Dunlap
Rachel Harkai
Cynthia Haven
Tung Hui-Hu
Josie Kearns
Eric Leigh
Laurence W. Thomas
Oliver Thornton
Keith Waldrop
Awards & Honors
received a grant from the U of M’s Provost’s Office for a study of contemporary films
made by young Viet Kieu (‘Overseas Vietnamese’) who have returned to their mother
country after being raised abroad. “The films are not about the war, instead lovely, poetic
studies of the character, culture, and traditions of Vietnamese life, e.g. The Scent of Green
Papaya, and Vertical Rays of the Sun.” Frank will do research in the British Film Institute in
London.
was awarded the University of Texas’s $90,000 Keene Prize in
May. It’s given to one writer a year in any field, graduate or
undergraduate, who is studying at Texas.
was awarded an eleven-month position as writer-inresidence
with the Hub City Writers Project of Spartanburg,
SC where she will be compiling and editing an anthology
of regional poetry and working on her own writing until
May 2008. Her poetry is forthcoming in Spork and Michigan
Quarterly Review.
is the winner of the 2007/08 Milena Jesenská Journalism
Fellowship and will be going to Krakow, Warsaw, and Vienna
next summer. She will write a series of articles about her
Will Dunlap
research for the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles
Times and will gather material for her forthcoming book, Czeslaw Milosz: Memories and
Recollections. The forthcoming volume also received a Kosciuszko Foundation grant.
is the recipient of $3,000 and the 70 th James D. Phelan Literary Award from the San
Francisco Foundation/Intersection for the Arts, given to California Writers under 35,
regardless of genre. Previous winners of the Jackson-Phelan prizes include Philip Levine,
Al Young, and Jane Hirschfield.
has won a month-long residency at the writer/artist colony Ragdale Foundation in Lake
Forest, IL.
is the recipient of a $5,000 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. The annual awards
are given for lyric poems celebrating the human spirit.
notes, “I won a cash prize in the Margaret Reid contest for traditional verse.”
was the recipient of an Emmy Award from the Michigan Chapter of the National
Television Academy for his work as writer and producer of “Celebrating Hopwood: 75
Years of Writing Word Reading,” “a short documentary made for the 75th anniversary
celebration last year. ‘Celebrating Hopwood’ was a co-production of HKO Media and
Michigan Television and featured interviews with several former winners, including
Lawrence Kasdan and Elizabeth Kostova, as well as Hopwood historian Jack Sharrar and
the program’s own Nicholas Delbanco and Andrea Beauchamp.”
writes that his press, Burning Deck, is reprinting The Grand Hotels (of Joseph Cornell) by
Robert Coover, fiction.

Deaths
Richard A. Laing of Ann Arbor, died on December 10, 2006. He was the winner of a Major
Poetry Award in 1953. Mr. Laing was a U of M researcher, member of the Logic of Computers
Group, and affiliated with the department of Computer and Communication Sciences.
Grace Anne Preston of Versailles. Kentucky died on January 14, 2007. She was the recipient of
Summer Poetry Awards in 1953 and 1954.
Marilynn M. Rosenthal, winner of a 1970 Major Essay Award, died of cancer at the age of 77 on
August 9. She won a Fulbright Scholarship to study medical safety in England and Sweden
and became an expert on medical mishaps, authoring and editing several books on the
subject, most recently Medical Error: What Do We Know? What Do We Do?, which assessed
the critical area of patient safety and stressed the need for accountability and transparency
in the medical community. A professor and medical sociologist, she directed the Program in
Health Studies at the U of M-Dearborn and was associate editor of the U of M Medical Schools
Program in Society and Medicine, also founding and coordinating the U of M Health Policy
Forum. Her son Josh was killed in the September 11 attack and she established a lecture series
in his name at the U of M. Last year, she donated funds to the Hopwood Program to award
the Helen J. Daniels Prize in Undergraduate Nonfiction. Helen J. Daniels was the pen name she
used when she entered the Hopwood Contest.
Richard Keller Simon, winner of Major Hopwood Awards in Drama and Essay, died on April 4,
2005. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the U of M and Ph.D. from Stanford. He was
professor and Chair of the Humanities Program at California Polytechnic State University.
Eugene L. Williamson, recipient of Summer Hopwood Fiction and Poetry Awards in 1954, died
in Huntsville, Alabama on March 22, 2006.
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 attracts
a lot of attention. We appreciate your thoughtfulness very much and enjoy showing off your
work to visitors.
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: abeauch@umich.
edu. 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 November 26. If your information arrived after that, it will be included in
our next newsletter which will come out in June.
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.
The Hopwood Program has a Web page address: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/hopwood/.
Visit the English Department’s MFA Program site at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/mfa.
Best wishes for a very happy new year! Do stop by to say hello if you’re visiting Ann Arbor.
Andrea Beauchamp
11

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