Rebecca Wittie-Growe (RC Creative Writing, Spanish, 2005) is publishing A Kid’s Guide to Coronavirus (with Julia Martin Burch, illustrated by Viviana Garofoli), a free e-book guide for parents and kids. It will be on Kindle next week, but more information is here.

Rebecca earned an MSW in Social Work and Mental Health at Washington University at St. Louis in 2010 and has been a therapist at Growe Counseling LLC since August 2015.

Congratulations to recent RC creative writing honors grads Hannah Brauer and Zofia Ferki, who received a  $1500 Virginia Voss Award for their honors theses. Named for the late Virginia Voss, a U-M graduate who served as College Editor of Mademoiselle Magazine, the Voss Awards are given each year to senior Honors women for excellence in writing.

Andrew Warrick and Marlon Rajan have received the 2020 recipients of the David and Sylvia Nelson Award,  This award supports creative writing students performing unpaid summer internships that further their writing education.

Andrew Warrick is a junior double majoring in Creative Writing and Literature and History. He will complete and revise a novel set in 1960s Ann Arbor next year as an honors thesis. Andrew will intern this summer with Pegasus Books in New York City, an independent publisher committed to publishing a diverse field of fiction and nonfiction. Andrew will read submissions and help manage communications between publisher and author, valuable experience for his planned future career in publishing.

Marlon Rajan is a sophomore majoring in Creative Writing and Literature. She will intern this summer for The Elizabeth Kaplan Literary Agency. This agency works primarily with fiction and nonfiction authors submitting narrative nonfiction, including biographies, memoirs, and literary and young adult fiction. Marlon will read and assess a diverse range of submissions, which will help her gain practical experience in publishing, a career she plans to pursue.

Several current RC students (and LSA students majoring in RC Creative Writing) won Fall 2019 Hopwood awards! Congratulations!

First- and Second-Year Hopwood Awards in Fiction
Jena Vallina
Vivian Chiao

First- and Second- Year Hopwood Awards in Poetry
Nicole Tooley
Jade Wurst
Olivia Evans

First- and Second-Year Hopwood Awards in Nonfiction
Olivia Evans

The Michael R. Gutterman Award
Miriam Saperstein

The Marjorie Rapaport Award in Poetry
smitty smith

The Jeffrey L. Weisberg Memorial Award
Julia Freeman

Roy W. Cowden Memorial Fellowship
Mylicia Williams
Grace Toll

The Roy and Helen Meador Writing Award
Jena Vallina

Academy of American Poets Award
Lynne Bekdash

These honors will be conferred on Wednesday, January 22, 5:30-7:30. in the Rackham Auditorium.

Following the announcement of the awards, there will be a reading from Raquel Salas Rivera, Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, winner of the 2018 Ambroggio Prize, & winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry.

Light reception to follow. Free to attend and open to all!

Carmen Bugan (RC 1996, Creative Writing) will read from Lillies from America: New and Selected Poems, 2004-2019, at Literati this Thursday at 7 pm.  After her RC days Carmen earned an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University, and a MA and PhD (English Literature) from Oxford University, UK. Her poetry collections include Crossing the Carpathians (2004), The House of Straw (2014), and Releasing the Porcelain Birds (2016). She has also published a memoir, Burying the Typewriter (2012), which won the Bread Loaf Conference Prize for Nonfiction, and a critical study, Seamus Heaney and East European Poetry in Translation: Poetics of Exile (2013). She teaches at the Gotham Writers Workshop in NYC and lives on Long Island. She was made a George Orwell Prize Fellow in 2017.

Also reading on Thursday will be David Cope, a  teacher of Carmen’s from Grand Rapids Community College.

An article about Carmen was featured in the Ann Arbor District Library’s online Pulp magazine, written by Martha Stuit (RC 2011, English, Creative Writing, and the Environment). Martha also has a Masters (2016) from the U-M School of Information. She works for the U-M Library and for Deep Blue, U-M’s digital repository service, and has worked as a reporter.

The third issue of the RC Alumni Journal is out now! This is an annual publication funded by donations that features work by RC and Creative Writing alum. Contributors include Peter Anderson, Carmen Bugan, Julia Byers, Lynn Chou, Bob Clifford, Ellen Dreyer, Melissa Durante, Robin Lily Goldberg, John Hagen, Hannah Levine, Dan Madaj, David McLeod, Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, David Erik Nelson, Kathryn Orwig, Heena Shah, Ian Ross Singleton, and Elizabeth Witte. You can find a PDF of this and the first two issues under the “Journals” tab on this RC Writers site.