Vol. LXXIX, No. 2
AUGUST 2018 HOPWOOD NEWSLETTER HELLO! Welcome to the new-look Hopwood alumni newsletter, a newsletter that marks my eight-month anniversary managing the Hopwood Program. I’m grateful to have interacted with so many of you already, and I have plenty to catch you up on from these first few months. We’ve been working with a new program assistant, Emma Richter (LSA English/History, class of 2019); we’ve begun an ambitious cataloguing and library acquisition policy process for our Hopwood Room collection; and, of course, since our last newsletter we’ve given awards to 66 promising student writers, many of them receiving multiple honors across categories. In this newsletter as in all things, I’m indebted to Andrea Beauchamp, whose 38 years of service kept the Hopwood Program thriving. Andrea left the program in great shape, and I’m hopeful that I can keep it running half as well as she did. We’re also excited that the Hopwood Program has a new director, Professor Douglas Trevor. Doug is is the author of the short story collection The Book of Wonders, the novel Girls I Know, and the short story collection The Thin Tear in the Fabric of Space. Welcome, Doug! We hope this newsletter finds you in good health, and in the middle of a really good book. Yours, Hannah Ensor
A small sample of recent Hopwood winners’ books; photo by Hopwood Program Assistant Emma Richter
NATASHA TRETHEWEY TO GIVE HOPWOOD READING IN JAN 2019 Natasha Trethewey served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014). She is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Monument (2018), Thrall (2012), and Native Guard (2006), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. At Northwestern University she is a Board of Trustees Professor of English in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. In 2012 she was named Poet Laureate of the State of
Mississippi and and in 2013 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She will be reading at the Underclassmen Awards Ceremony on January 30, 2019. This event is presented in collaboration with Phi Beta Kappa. Stay tuned to our website and social media channels for more details about the location and time of this event. NATASHA TRETHEWAY For more details, see lsa.umich.edu/ hopwood Photo by Matt Valentine
NEWS + NOTES NEWS + NOTES
CARMEN BUGAN (1993, ‘95)
ANN TASHI SLATER (1990)
Carmen Bugan was named the Helen L. DeRoy Visiting Professor in Honors at the University of Michigan this year; she will be teaching a course on “Poetry and the Language of Oppression” in the fall.
in Creative Writing at the California Institute of the Arts with an emphasis on creative non-fiction. She will also be teaching in the undergraduate BFA program in Critical Studies there. Her next book Experiments in Joy is slated for release in February 2019 from CCM Press.
CHANDY JOHN (1985, ‘86)
HOWARD R. WOLF (1967)
Chandy John published the essay “For David” in Dreamers Creative Writing and “The Art of Constructive Worrying” in JAMA, the short story “Irregularity” in The Examined Life, and two poems, “Leirvik Oysters” and “Home” in Flying Island. He’s working on a novel, and thanks his writing mentor Alyson Hagy (Hopwood, 1984) for support and advice that continues more than 20 years after he took her creative writing class.
Howard R. Wolf delivered the following talks: “Robert Frost: The Voice of Amherst,” at a recent Amherst College reunion; “Concepts of ‘Home’ in Wilder and Pinter: Domestic Life and Its Discontents” at Thornton Wilder Society Meeting, July 12-14, 2018; and “On Living Two Lives: A Writer in the University” at The University at Buffalo - SUNY, May 8, 2018. Led the following classes for the Amherst Senior Center: “Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ and Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’: The Failure of Success and the Flight from Illusion” in May/June 2018; “Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and the Experience of Modern America” in August 2018.
On October 3, 2018, Ann Tashi Slater will present at the Rubin Museum in NYC, reading from her AGNI essay (see below, publications) and talking about Tibetan wisdom in everyday life. On October 6, she will take part in the “Personal Identity in an Intersectional World” panel at the She Roars: Celebrating Women at Princeton conference.
BARRY GARELICK (1971) Barry Garelick gave a talk in San Luis Obispo on math education in the U.S. this past February. It was an updated version of a talk he gave in 2016 at the researchED conference held at Oxford. A video of the talk may be found here.
BART PLANTENGA (1977) “In 2017 I finished my novel Radio Activity Kills. Now to find an agent/ publisher. I have been doing radio since the 1980s and continue to do a monthly thematic radio show including WrecK WReCoverY 1204, Wreck HipstAr 1205, Wreck Yoga Incite 1206, Wreck NY*SEEr 1207, Wreck Asymmetrical Kapital 1208, Wreck Leon Levitating 1209, Wreck Slow Dark1 1210, Wreck This M.E.S. 1211 RIP Mark E. Smith, Wreck Slowmess2 1212. I also made a number of short films illustrating stories from my books Paris Scratch and NY Sin Phoney in Face Flat Minor, which can be viewed here. And finally, an artwork of mine appeared in the MoMA show Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village.” For links to the above, visit Bart’s website here.
DEMIAN LINN (1996) Demian was a writer on the video game South Park: The Fractured But Whole. He wrote many, many fart jokes.
GABRIELLE CIVIL (1992) Gabrielle Civil started a full-time faculty position in the MFA program
JULIANA ROTH (2014) Juliana Roth graduated with her MFA from Rutgers University - Camden where she studied fiction, screenwriting, and poetry. Her writing was published this year in VIDA Review, Construction, and the Atticus Review. She will be teaching creative writing at Rutgers in the fall.
MARGE PIERCY (1954, ‘56, ‘57)
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Marge Piercy was interviewed for a Bill Moyers podcast documentary, “No Choice." She conducted her 8th Juried Intensive Poetry Workshop in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, in June 2018.
NEWS + NOTES (CONT’D), BOOKS + CHAPBOOKS NEWS + NOTES, CONT’D MATTHEW HITTINGER (2004) Matthew Hittinger was featured on The Poet and The Poem from The Library of Congress.
RICHARD WIDERKEHR (1966, ‘67) One of the poems from Richard Widerkehr’s new book, In the Presence of Absence, was read by Garrison Keillor on Writer’s Almanac on Nov. 14, 2017.
SHERMAN J. SILBER (1965) Dr. Sherman J. Silber appeared on The Today Show with Megyn Kelly on Monday, April 23, to discuss the preservation of fertility in young women diagnosed with cancer. He appeared with one of his earliest patients from 1997, her husband, and with their four children from the ovary that they had frozen 21 years earlier.
reCycle Press); Mrs. Noah Takes the Helm (Turning Point Publications); and The Quickening (Antrim House Press). Last summer, her collection of poetry about her love of lakes and oceans and her numerous sailing experiences, Water-Gazers, was also published by FutureCycle Press.
ESMÉ WEIJUN WANG (2010) The Collected Schizophrenias, essays, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in February 2019.
GABRIELLE CIVIL (1992) Experiments in Joy is forthcoming from CCM Press in February 2019.
HANNAH ENSOR (2009) Love Dream With Television, poetry, is forthcoming from Noemi Press in September 2018.
HARRY THOMAS (1979) The Truth of Two: Selected Translations, Un-Gyve Press, Nov. 2017.
STEPHEN ERIC BERRY (1986)
HENDRIK MEIJER (1973)
Stephen Eric Berry’s film Clogged Only with Music, Like the Wheels of Birds was accepted by the Emily Dickinson International Society. The short film was screened at the annual meeting in Amherst on August 4.
Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century, nonfiction, University of Chicago Press, 2018.
BOOKS + CHAPBOOKS ELIZABETH SCHULTZ (1992) In 2014, Elizabeth Schultz had three books of poetry published: The Sauntering Eye: Kansas Meditations (Futu-
HOWARD R. WOLF (1967) One Day at the End of His World, short stories, Prestige Books International, 2018. Ends and Other Beginnings: A Quintet of Stories and a Memoir, forthcoming in 2018.
JAMES M. DEEM (1975) The Prisoners of Breendonk: Personal Histories from a World War II Con-
Sue Landers, Hopwood Poetry 1993
SUE LANDERS NAMED EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF LAMBDA LITERARY We’re delighted to share the good news that this month, Sue Landers becomes the executive director of Lambda Literary, the nation’s leading LGBTQ+ literary organization. Sue won a Hopwood Award in Poetry in 1993, as well as the Roy W. Cowden Memorial Fellowship in 1991. She is the author of three books of poetry: Franklinstein, Covers, and 248 mgs., a panic picnic. Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, The Brooklyn Rail, The Offing, The Chicago Review, and elsewhere. After earning her BA with Honors from Michigan in 1993 and an MFA from George Mason University in 1999, she moved to New York where she was the founding editor of the experimental poetry journal POM2. She has held writing residencies at PLAYA Summer Lake and Saltonstall Colony for the Arts. Sue says, “Michigan was absolutely vital in my development as a writer and champion of the arts.” Congratulations, Sue — we’re excited for all the good work you’ll do at Lambda Literary! centration Camp, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015, and its Dutch translation from Horizon, 2015.
BOOKS + CHAPBOOKS, CONT’D, FICTION PUBLICATIONS BOOKS + CHAPBOOKS, CONT’D KEITH WALDROP (1958) Keith Waldrop published a poetry chapbook, Of And, Cornwall: Guillemot Press, 2018. The first volume of his selected poems in German published in December 2017, Gravitationen I: Ausgewählte Gedichte (1968-1997), ed. David Frühauf & Jan Kuhlbrodt, Frankfurt/Main: Gutleut Verlag, 2017.
STEPHANIE FELDSTEIN (1998, ‘99)
TARIK DOBBS (2018)
The Animal Lover’s Guide to Changing the World, Stephanie Feldstein’s first book, published by St. Martin’s Griffin, June 2018. The book is “a nonfiction exploration of how human lives intersect with animal lives and what people can do personally and politically to create a more sustainable, humane, and compassionate planet.”
Men Who Seek Refuge in the Djinn, poetry chapbook, forthcoming from Poached Hare Press.
ALEXANDER CIGALE (1985)
RAE GOURIRAND (1992) Rae Gouirand’s chapbook Must Apple was selected by TC Tolbert as the winner of the Oro Fino Competition, and is forthcoming from Educe Press in late summer 2018. Her second collection of poetry, Glass is Glass Water is Water, is forthcoming from Spork Press in October 2018.
RICHARD WIDERKEHR (1966, ‘67)
Number One Chinese Restaurant on the cover of the NYT Book Review. Photo courtesy Literati Bookstore
In the Presence Of Absence, poems, MoonPath Press (distributed by Ingram).
DEBUT BY RECENT HOPWOOD ALUMNA LILLIAN LI (2015) MAKES BIG IMPACT
RITA LAKIN (1955)
Lillian Li’s debut novel, Number One Chinese Restaurant, came out this summer and was swiftly named a Summer Must-Read by TIME, Buzzfeed, The Wall Street Journal, Star Tribune, Fast Company, The Village Voice, Toronto Star, Fortune Magazine, InStyle, and O, The Oprah Magazine. NOCR was Long Listed for The Center for Fiction’s 2018 First Novel Prize and named a Most Anticipated Book of 2018 by The Millions, Bitch Media, and Cosmopolitan. Congratulations, Lillian!
Two new elderly ladies comedy mysteries: Getting Old Can Hurt You and Getting Old Will Haunt You, published by Severn House in London.
ROSMARIE WALDROP (1963) Rosmarie Waldrop has published a chapbook: White is a Color, Cornwall: Guilemot Press, 2018. A Portuguese edition, Os Elétrons (nào) sao todos iguais e outros poemas, translated by Marcelo Lotufo, published by Edições Jabuticaba (Brazil), 2018.
FICTION P U B L I C AT I O N S
Selected translation of “Aphorisms, etc.” by Anatoly Mariengoff in B O D Y Literature; Selections from the diaries of Daniil Kharms in Gobshite 22; Trafika Europe 13 Russian Ballet issue (guest editor): translations of short stories by Katia Kapovich (“Avengers”, Pavel Lembersky (“The Death of Samusis”), Igor Sakhnovsky, (“If You’re Alive” and “The Schenidrman Principle”) and Naum Vaiman “Judeophile”); Ch. 1-2 of The Last Magog (novel) by Val Votrin.
BART PLANTENGA (1977) “Beer Mystic: Raden in Woodheaven,” in From Somewhere to Nowhere: The End of the American Dream, anthology, Autonomedia, October 2017; “The Kingdom Of Busby Berkley,” Work Literary Magazine, January 2018.
HOWARD R. WOLF (1967) “At the Edge of the West,” story, in Trajectory (Spring 2018); “The Icicles of Eggertsville,” a semi-comic retelling of “Snows of Kilimanjaro,” in Commonwealth Review. Both stories are part of his Ludwig Fried cycle, a group of which will be published as One Day at the End of His World by Prestige Books International in November 2018.
PUBLICATIONS CONT’D FICTION P U B L I C AT I O N S CONT’D MARGE PIERCY (1954, ‘56, ‘57) “Great day coming,” Paterson Literary Review, Issue 46, 2018; and “What do you want in the end?,” Meat For Tea (online).
NATALIE BAKOPOULOS (2005) “Music Night,” fiction, Ploughshares, Spring 2018.
TIM HEDGES (2009) “Category Five,” short story, Spring 2018 issue of Colorado Review.
POETRY P U B L I C AT I O N S ALEXANDER CIGALE (1985) Translations of Dmitry Khvostov’s “Liberation of Moscow” and 3 verses from Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, with short essay on “The Patriotic War of 1812” in Russian literature, in Delos 33.1; Two 18th C. Russian poets in Four Centuries 16, Epic Ode to Catherine the Great (1782) by Vasily Petrov in Four Centuries 17; and Vasily Zhukovsky’s 471-line oratorio “Singer in the Kremlin” (1817) in Four Centuries 18: Four longer blank verse poems by Vladislav Khodasevich in The Hopkins Review 11.2 (Spring 2018); 5 poems by Mikhail Eremin (with essay) in National Translation Month-NTM, 4 prose poems by Viachselav Kurpiyanov in OffCourse 69; 5 poems by “neo-archaist” Andrey Guschin in Peacock Journal; Three Contemporary Russian Poets:
FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM @UM_HOPWOOD_PROGRAM FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM @UM_HOPWOOD_PROGRAM ESMÉ WANG (‘10) + DANIELLE LAZARIN (‘07) WILL READ AT MICHIGAN FOR THE ZELL VISITING WRITERS SERIES 9/20/18 AT 5:30 PM Click here for the full ZVWS schedule
Viacheslav Kupriyanov, Dmitry Kuzmin, and Aleksandr Kabanov in Plume 74; “Complete list of things stolen from a burglarized one-room apartment (with complementary commentary)” by Alexander Ulanov in RHINO 2018; Trafika Europe 13 Russian Ballet issue (guest editor): Mikhail Eremin Viacheslav Kupriyanov, Alexander Ulanov, “Little Animal” and “Flow” by Shamshad Abdullaev in Tupelo Quarterly 13; “Here and Now” and “A Moment; the Room” by Shamshad Abdullaev in World Literature Today blog (8/23/2017); Two early poems by Osip Mandelstam, “Conch” and “Lutheran”, in Like Light :25 Years of Bright Hill (anthology); Translations of 3 poems by Alexander Kabanov, with introduction Words For War; Poems from Ukraine (anthology), reprinted from in The Common and Poetry International.
CARMEN BUGAN (1993, ‘95) “Rings,” Irish Times, March 2018.
HARRY THOMAS (1979) “Bearings,” poem, forthcoming in Literary Imagination.
KATIE WILLINGHAM (2014, ‘15) Katie Willingham has new poems appearing in Massachusetts Review,
Indiana Review, and Rhino, and soon to appear in Diagram and Iowa Review. An interview about her debut collection Unlikely Designs can be found in the Summer 2018 issue of Rain Taxi.
KD WILLIAMS (1992)
KD Williams has a poem forthcoming in The Huron River Review.
KEITH WALDROP (1958) Poems published include: poems from “Where Elses,” Harpers (September 2017); three poems, Rascal 1; “Hope: or, The Ruins of Empire,” The Hoosac Institute Journal 1 (June 2018); “Potential Random III” in Readings In Contemporary Poetry 2010-2016, Vincent Katz, ed. NY: DIA Art Foundation, 2017, p. 259; and “Theme” in The World Speaking Back: To Denise Riley, ed. Ágnes Lehóczky and Zoê Skoulding, Norwich:University of East Anglia: Boiler House Press, 2018, p. 66. 5 poems were translated into French by Bernard Rival in La tête et les cornes No. 4 (Nov. 2017 pp. 7-13)
LAURENCE THOMAS (1956) “Replacement” and “Snowstorm,” Third Wednesday; “Replacement,” Blue Unicorn; “Prom” and “Pantoum for Getting Together,” Spare Mule; “Guidebook to Pursuing an Agenda,” “All I Can Remember,” and “On My Brother’s Death,” performed by Neighborhood Theatre Group, April 2018; and “Renascence,” Calliope.
LEAH FALK (2012) Leah Falk has two poems forthcoming in FIELD in fall 2018, and last year published work in Thrush and Blackbird.
POETRY PUBLICATIONS CONT’D POETRY P U B L I C AT I O N S , CONTINUED MARGE PIERCY (1954, ‘56, ‘57) Poems in several literary journals: “Abundance is wonderful and then it isn’t,” Third Wednesday, Vol. X, No. 1, Winter 2017; “As the day dies, shadows grow,” Visions International, #96, Fall 2017; “At the turning of the tide,” “I pass them,” and “Cats for dummies,” Marsh Hawk Review, Spring 2017; “The dinner lottery,” Parody, Vol. 6, Issue 1, April 2017; “Even wine turns at last to vinegar,” Fifth Wednesday, Spring 2017, Issue 20; “Happy birthday to me,” “Holiday of leaves,” “How it is now,” and “How we do it,” Paterson Literary Review, Issue 45, 2017-18; “I’d worship them but lack the temperament” and “Mid-March and winter stays put,” Connecticut River Review, 2017; “Illegal with only hope,” “Where do pets go in the end,” and “Their mouths are closed,” San Diego Poetry Annual, 2017-18; “Living among them,””What happiness looks like,” and “My shifting shadow,” Paterson Literary Review, Issue 45, 2017-18; “Late to find me,” Bryant Literary Review, Vol. 19, 2018; “In the end, only you,” “As I try to imagine it,” and “I’m here, she isn’t,” Broadkill Review, Jan/Feb 2018 issue (online); “The Patrilinial Side” and “The Wanderings of Hannah,” Ibbetson Street, #41 and #42, both 2017; “Praise in spite of all,” “Remnants of a dead marriage,” and “That wild rush,” LIPS, #45/46, 2017; “The President-Elect Speaks,” Nasty Women Poets, edited by Grace Bauer and Julie Kane; “Save me,” “Summer, bummer,” and “What was in those looted streets” Chiron Review, Issues
#107, 110, and 108, Spring 2017, Winter 2017, and Summer 2017.
MARTHA ZWEIG (1966) “But No” in Rhino, 2018; “I Wake Up Without a Navel” in Superstition Review, #20, December, 2017; “Undersong,” In Cleaver. Issue 21, 3/21/18; “Beauty Sleep” and “Zombie Jamboree” in Scoundrel Time, 3/12/18; “Mystery Package,” “Precipitations” and “Task Force” in Denver Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 3; “Away Home” reprinted from Monkey Lightning (Tupelo 2010), and “Boughbreak” reprinted from What Kind (Wesleyan UP 2003), included in the anthology Roads Taken, Contemporary Vermont Poetry, editors Sydney Lea and Chard de Niord, Green Writers Press, Brattleboro, Vermont, 2017.
MATTHEW HITTINGER (2004) Two lino cut prints and four poems — “Poetics of the Parentheses,” “Monarch Migraine,” “Mechaphemera,” and “From At the Museum of the Moving Image (Model Magic)” — in Crazyhorse (Issue #92, Fall 2017); poem “Yars’ Revenge” and poem and lino cut print “Benelux Redux” at The Good Men Project.
RACHEL MORGENSTERN-CLARREN (2007) “West to East,” Bellevue Literary Review V18 #1, Spring 2018; “Salvation” (translation of Maria Valéria Rezende’s “Salvação” from Brazilian Portuguese), Words Without Borders, March 2018.
RAE GOUIRAND (1992) “Fig Suite,” poem, Berkeley Poetry
Review, Spring 2018; “Quince Suite,” poem, Conjunctions, Spring 2018; “Long Exposure” and “Solution,” poems, Michigan Quarterly Review, Winter 2018; “California No,” poem, Quarterly West, Summer 2018; “Before Dark” and “Image,” poems, Under a Warm Green Linden, December 2017; “Arils on Velvet” and “At the Rough Table,” poems, Watershed Review, Spring 2018; “Stanzas to Those Just Arriving,” poem, Zócalo Public Square, April 2018.
RICHARD WIDERKEHR (1966, ‘67) The following poems have been published in magazines or posted online: “Ariel Released” in Measure; “Counsel” and “Other Clefs” in Jeopardy; “A Street Falls Upward” In The Binnacle; “At The Grace Cafe,” “At Akumal: ‘Water Ain’t Water,’ He Said””:; “Hansel And Gretel: The Witch Speaks” in Arts & Letters;: “The Other Life” in West Trade Review; “Clouds” in Bellevue Literary Review; “Cracow” in Stirring, A Literary Collection; “Deep In May” in Shot Glass Review; “Seeds” and “Listening To A House” in Mud Season Review; “Writing On Air” in Penwood Review; “One of these Days,” “After Seeing An Assemblage By Anita Boyle” and “At The South End of Lake Whatcom” in Sweet Tree Review. The following poems are forthcoming: “When She Was A Mermaid” in Natural Bridge; and “What If Lot’s Two Married Daughters Had Escaped” in Atlanta Review.”
ROSMARIE WALDROP (1963) Poems published include “Bits & Pieces,” Golden Handcuffs Review 2, No. 25 (2018); “Coupling,” Alienocene-Second Stratum
PUBLICATIONS CONT’D POETRY P U B L I C AT I O N S , CONT’D (6/9/2018); “High in the Sky,” “The Feeling One Could Have About It,” and “Intentions” on Datableed 9 (4/8/18); and poems in the following anthologies: Atlantic Drift: An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics, eds. James Byrne & Robert Sheppard (ARC Publications & Edge Hill UP, 2018), pp. 303-323; Women: poetry: migration, ed. Jane Joritz-Nakagawa (theenk Books, 2017); and Emily’s Daughters: Eleven Women Poets, with Drawings/Vignettes by Ed Colker (Haybarn Editions, 2018). Two poem sequences and an essay have been translated into Russian by Alexander Skidan in The New Literary Observer 151 (Spring 2018).
STEPHEN ERIC BERRY (1986) “Sadique Couture,” California Quarterly (44:3), summer 2018.
TARIK DOBBS (2018) “Untitled / Dad’s House” and “Bismillah, Boom” in Diode Poetry Journal (11.2 July Issue).
DRAMA PERFORMANCES + P U B L I C AT I O N S BART PLANTENGA (1977) Thematic radio shows produced: WrecK WReCoverY 1204, Wreck HipstAr 1205, Wreck Yoga Incite 1206, Wreck NY*SEEr 1207, Wreck Asymmetrical Kapital 1208, Wreck
Leon Levitating 1209, Wreck Slow Dark1 1210, Wreck This M.E.S. 1211 RIP Mark E. Smith, Wreck Slowmess2 1212. All can be heard at https://www.mixcloud.com/wreckthismess/.
HOWARD R. WOLF (1967) “Home at the End of the Day: An American Family Drama in Three Acts” was performed on Wednesday, June 6, 2018 at the 52nd JCC Book & Arts Fair in Buffalo, NY.
KIM YAGED (1993, ‘98) Kim Yaged’s play “The Vast Mystery of Who You Are: Part One” was performed at New York Live Arts in April. Her animated short “Coming Full Circle”, based on her play “Hypocrites & Strippers”, will be part of Flame Con in New York City in August.
SAMUEL HAMASHIMA (2016, ‘18) “American Spies and Other Homegrown Fables” has been picked from submissions around the country to be workshopped at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. During the 2018 Undergraduate Playwrights’ Workshop, five playwrights will be flown into DC, housed, and be given a week of intense time devoted to their scripts with professional directors, dramaturgs, actors, and actresses.
ARTICLES + E SSAYS ANN TASHI SLATER (1990) “Teatime in Darjeeling,” essay, Tin House; “Traveling in Bardo,” essay, AGNI; “Driving to Shangri-La,”
flash nonfiction, in Flock and Kyoto Journal.
BART PLANTENGA (1977) “NY Sin Phoney in Face Flat Minor vs Paris Scratch: Introducing 6 short movies,” Sensitive Skin, 10/17; “Algebra Suicide: Joy Division with a Sense of Humor [reprint],” 6/17, Dark Entries Records, Liner notes for posthumous release FEMININE SQUARED; Lydia Tomkiw: Like Royalty in Exile [reprint], Fringecore 9, 6/17; Shouting at the Ground, Through the Trees, Ekphrastic Review 2/18.
HOWARD R. WOLF (1967) “As the Fourth of July Approaches,” in The Buffalo News’s “My View” column, July 2, 2018; “Thornton Wilder’s Syncretic Field of Reference: A Mosaic of Antiquity and Modernity,” a paper presented at the 2015 Newport, RI, meeting of the Thornton Wilder Society, was published in Thornton Wilder in Collaboration: Critical Essays on His Drama and Fiction, Eds. Bryer, Hallet, and Oczkowicz; Cambridge Scholars Publishing (UK, 2018).
MARTHA ZWEIG (1966) “Backwards”, guest blog, in Superstition Review, 4/12/18.
ROSEMARY HARP (1993) “The Silence After the Accident,” essay, published on Brain Child Magazine in May, 2018.
REVIEWS ANN TASHI SLATER (1990) Interview with Megan Marshall (winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for
PUBLICATIONS CONT’D REVIEWS, CONT’D Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, and author of Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast), titled “Garden, Temple, Tea, River, Miracle, Sun,” published on Huffington Post.
BART PLANTENGA (1977) Wonderful World review of Paris Scratch by Tosh Berman, 4/17; Best Books of 2017 Paris Scratch & NY Sin Phoney by Steven Dalachinsky, Sensitive Skin, 12/17; Tosh Berman named Paris Scratch among his Top 10 reads of 2017, 12/17.
IAN ROSS SINGLETON (2004) “Black Holes and Blue Windows: Truth and Fiction in Aetherial Worlds,” review of Tatyana Tolstaya’s Aetherial Worlds (Knopf), May 17, 2018, Fiction Writers Review.
AWARDS + HONORS CHRISTINE MONTROSS (1998) Christine Montross received the Richard B. Salomon Faculty Research Award for excellence in scholarship from Brown University.
JAMES M. DEEM (1975) The Prisoners of Breendonk: Personal Histories from a World War II Concentration Camp, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2015), received the following honors: Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 2016, chosen by the National Council for Social Studies in
cooperation with the Children’s Book Council; 2016 Best Children’s Books of the Year (History, Outstanding Merit), chosen by the Children’s Book Committee, Bank Street College of Education; a 2015 selection of the Junior Library Guild; Bestselling Informational Nonfiction Book in Belgium, 2015.
JOYCE WINSLOW (1992) Joyce Winslow won the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Contest with a short story, “The Juggler,” based on a Chagall Painting.
KEITH WALDROP (1958) In June 2018, Keith Waldrop had an exhibition of his collages at the Peaceable Kingdom Gallery in Providence, RI.
LEAH FALK (2012) Laura Kasischke and Theodore Roethke
LAURA KASISCHKE (1981-84, ‘84) NAMED THEODORE ROETHKE DISTINGUISHED UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR Twelve-time Hopwood winner and former Hopwood director Laura Kasischke is one of five faculty members designated as Distinguished University Professors by the Board of Regents. Her new title — Theodore Roethke Distinguished University Professor — memorializes Michigan alum, 1954 Pulitzer Prize honoree for poetry, and namesake of the Hopwood Award Theodore Roethke Prize for long poem or poetic sequence. As reported in The University Record by Safiya Merchant, “Distinguished University Professorships, established in 1947, recognize senior faculty with exceptional scholarly or creative achievements, national and international reputations for academic excellence and superior records of teaching, mentoring and service. Each professorship bears a name determined by the appointive professor in consultation with his or her dean.” You can read the full story in The Record at this link, and for more on Kasischke’s connection to Roethke, click here.
This spring Leah was awarded a scholarship to the Yiddish Book Center’s Tent: Creative Writing in nonfiction.
LILLIAN LI (2015) Number One Chinese Restaurant (Henry Holt, 2018) named a Summer Must-Read by TIME, Buzzfeed, The Wall Street Journal, Star Tribune, Fast Company, The Village Voice, Toronto Star, Fortune Magazine, InStyle, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Long Listed for The Center for Fiction’s 2018 First Novel Prize. A Most Anticipated Book of 2018 by The Millions, Bitch Media, and Cosmopolitan.
ROSMARIE WALDROP (1963) Gap Gardening: Selected Poems was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry.
STEPHEN ERIC BERRY (1986) Stephen was invited by Marta Werner (D’Youville College) to present a talk at this year’s Annual Meeting of the Emily Dickinson International Society, held on August 3-4, 2018 in Amherst, MA. This year’s meeting was “Emily Dickinson: In the
AWARDS + HONORS, DEATHS, + SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AWARDS + HONORS, CONT’D Company of Others (Otherness as Company).” Stephen’s presentation was titled: “Scavenging a Poem: Inspiring High School Students to Re-imagine Dickinson Through the Envelope Writings,” and will be an opportunity to showcase a unit he taught to 11th-graders at Chelsea High School (in Michigan) last year where students remediated foundobjects to create texts and poems using techniques that Dickinson demonstrates in her envelope poems.
D E AT H S
TOM CLARK (1963)
We’re very sad to announce that three Hopwood family members have passed away —Dorothy M. Kennedy, Donald Kaul, and Tom Clark.
Two-time Hopwood winner (for essay and poetry, "The Formal Structure of the Cantos of Ezra Pound" and "To Give Painless Light"), who was described by The New York Times as "a prolific and empathetic lyric poet,"passed away on Saturday. Tom Clark wrote more than 20 collections of poetry; was close with such poetry legends as Donald Hall (a professor of his at Michigan), Allen Ginsburg (read Allen's touching tribute to Tom here), and Ron Padgett; served as poetry editor of The Paris Review; and taught poetics for New College of California until 2008. We are saddened to hear of Tom Clark's passing, and send our condolences to his wife, Angelica, and all who knew and loved Tom.
DOROTHY M. KENNEDY
Dorothy M. Kennedy, wife of X.J. Kennedy (1959), passed away in March. “Though she never entered a Hopwood contest, she was a friend of many Hopwood winners. She co-edited several textbooks and children’s books, and on her own edited groundbreaking poetry anthologies for children, Make SUE LANDERS (1991, ‘93) Things Fly: Poems about the Wind (McElderry Books/Atheneum) and Sue Landers is the new executive I Thought I’d Take My Rat to School director of Lambda Literary, the (Little, Brown).” Dorothy and Joseph/ nation’s leading LGBTQ+ literary X.J. were married for 56 years. Our organization. See the press release condolences to X.J. Kennedy, and here, and the feature box on page 3 of to all who knew, loved, and learned this newsletter for more. from Dorothy.
X. J. KENNEDY (1959)
DONALD KAUL (1959)
"In June, I took part in a celebration for the 90th anniversary of the Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Cambridge, Mass. I gave a reading from the collection that the shop had recently published, Fits of Concision: Collected Poems of Six or Fewer Lines."
1959 Hopwood Drama winner (for “Man on a Tiger: A Three-Act Play”), longtime nationally-syndicated columnist for the Des Moines Register, two-time Pulizer Prize finalist, and founder of “RAGBRAI” (Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa) passed away on July 22, 2018. From the Des Moines Register: “Kaul’s ‘Over the Coffee’ columns in the Des Moines Register and other newspapers nationwide typically were drenched in satire. ‘His readers followed with a religious zeal that few modern journalists can hope to inspire,’ [...] Kyle Munson wrote earlier this year in a piece looking back on Kaul’s career and life.” Our condolences to Donald’s friends, family, and colleagues, and our gratitude for his living an admirable life of writing, humor, and service.
clockwise from upper left
Dorothy M. Kennedy (1931-2018) Donald Kaul (1934-2018) Tom Clark (1944-2018)
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August 2018 Vol. LXXIX, No. 2