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Curiouser and Curiouser
Essays
Nicholas Delbanco
The Ohio State University Press, 2017
A miscellany of sorts, preeminent author and critic Nicholas Delbanco’s Curiouser and Curiouser attests to a lifelong interest in music and the visual arts as well as both “mere” and “sheer” literature. With essays ranging from the restoration of his father-in-law’s famed Stradivarius cello—known throughout the world as “The Countess of Stanlein”—to a reimagining of H. A. and Margaret Rey’s lives and the creation of their most beloved character, Curious George, Delbanco examines what it means to live and love with the arts.
 
 
Whether exploring the history of personal viewing in the business of museum-going, musing on the process of rewriting one’s earliest published work, or looking back on the twists and turns of a life that spans the greater part of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, Delbanco’s Curiouser and Curiouser invites adventurous readers to follow him down the rabbit hole as he reflects on life as a student, an observer, a writer, a lover, a father, a teacher, and most importantly, a participant in the everyday experiences of human life.
 
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Dear Wizard
The Letters of Nicholas Delbanco and Jon Manchip White
edited by Nicholas Delbanco
University of Michigan Press, 2014
Dear Wizard is a carefully selected, highly crafted gathering of letters from over three decades of correspondence between authors Nicholas Delbanco and Jon Manchip White. This correspondence, in part a contest to outdo one another with exotic and outlandish letterhead, ranges in tone from carefree to grave and covers topics as diverse as the art and practice of writing, the state of the writer’s profession, and age, illness, love, and loss.
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The Hopwood Awards
75 Years of Prized Writing
Edited by Nicholas Delbanco, Andrea Beauchamp, and Michael Barrett
University of Michigan Press, 2006
"Permit me to say that I have won Hopwoods and also lost them, and I know the power that winning gives and the way the soul shakes when, all ears, you hear silence instead of your name."
-Arthur Miller

The Hopwood Awards claim a gallery of prizewinners who rose to become the Who's Who of writers of the last three generations: Max Apple, John Ciardi, Mary Gaitskill, Robert Hayden, Laura Kasischke, Jane Kenyon, Arthur Miller, Howard Moss, Frank O'Hara, Marge Piercy, Ronald Wallace, and Nancy Willard, among many others.

Since they first began in 1931, funded by a bequest from the will of playwright Avery Hopwood, University of Michigan Class of 1905, the Hopwood Awards have grown in profile and stature to become one of the most sought after and celebrated writing prizes for students.

The Hopwood Awards: 75 Years of Prized Writing collects-for the first time in one volume-poetry and prose by writers who won Hopwood Awards when they were students at the University of Michigan and who went on to achieve fame as writers.

Nicholas Delbanco is Professor of English and Director of the Hopwood Program at the University of Michigan. He is author or editor of numerous books, including Anywhere Out of the World: Essays on Travel, Writing, Death;The Sincerest Form; and The Writing Life: The Hopwood Lectures.

Andrea Beauchamp is Program Associate at the Hopwood Program, and Michael Barrett is Associate Editor at the Hopwood Program, University of Michigan.
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The Hopwood Lectures
Edited and with an introduction by Nicholas Delbanco
University of Michigan Press, 2009

The prestigious Hopwood Creative Writing Awards were established in 1931 from a bequest of the will of Avery Hopwood, a University of Michigan graduate and one of the most popular and successful dramatists of his time. Hopwood left one-fifth of his estate to his alma mater, an endowment that now awards approximately $135,000 each year in prize money. Annual awards are offered to both undergraduate and graduate students in drama, screenplay, nonfiction, novel, short fiction, and poetry. Among the program's most famous recipients are Robert Hayden, Arthur Miller, Frank O'Hara, and Marge Piercy.

In addition to the prize ceremony, the Hopwood Awards are celebrated each year with a lecture delivered by a prominent literary figure. Past Hopwood speakers include such luminaries as Saul Bellow, Richard Ford, Louise Glück, Nadine Gordimer, Robert Hass, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, and John Crowe Ransom. Their speeches have been collected in five previous volumes published by the University of Michigan Press over the past half-century: The Writer and His Craft: The Hopwood Lectures 1932-1952, edited by Roy W. Cowden; To The Young Writer: Hopwood Lectures, Second Series, edited by A. L. Bader; The Writer's Craft, edited by Robert A. Martin; Speaking of Writing: Selected Hopwood Lectures, edited by Nicholas Delbanco; and The Writing Life: The Hopwood Lectures, Fifth Series, edited by Nicholas Delbanco.

The present collection contains the ten lectures delivered since the last publication and includes work by Andrea Barrett, Charles Baxter, Mary Gordon, Donald Hall, Richard Howard, Lawrence Kasdan, Susan Orlean, Susan Stamberg, and Edmund White. The tenth lecture was delivered in spring 2008 by Charles Johnson.

Nicholas Delbanco is Robert Frost Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature and Chair of the Hopwood Committee. Delbanco is the author of twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including, most recently, Spring and Fall: A Novel. As editor he has compiled the work of, among others, John Gardner and Bernard Malamud. In addition to directing the MFA Program and the Hopwood Awards Program at the University of Michigan, he has served as Chair of the Fiction Panel for the National Book Awards and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and, twice, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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Speaking of Writing
Selected Hopwood Lectures
Nicholas Delbanco, Editor
University of Michigan Press, 1990
Essays on the art and craft of writing by some of the nation’s finest writers make up this rich collection, from Louise Bogan’s meditation on popular and unpopular poetry, to Saul Bellow’s assessment of the future of fiction, to Francie du Plessix Gray’s reflection on womenand Russian literature. Spanning five decades of writing, the essays address topics both timely and timeless in nature, and cover both the process and the product of writing.
 
These essays were originally presented at the Hopwood Lecture series at the University of Michigan in conjunction with the annual awarding of the Hopwood Prizes in creative writing. The internationally recognized awards are granted by the bequest of playwright Avery Hopwood (1884-1928), who sought to encourage student work in the fields of dramatic writing, fiction, poetry, and the essay. The essays speak to the apprentice writer, finding their focus in a twinned discussion of the craft of prose and the art of poetry. The authors share an assumption that literature matters, and vitally, to the culture it reports on and sustains.
 
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front cover of The Writing Life
The Writing Life
The Hopwood Lectures, Fifth Series
Nicholas Delbanco
University of Michigan Press, 2000
This collection of essays does not intend to teach its readers to write, nor does it attempt to convince them to take up the pen. Rather, in their respective essays, writers William Kennedy, Robert Hass, Richard Ford, Roger Rosenblatt, Geoffrey Wolff, Diane Johnson, Louise Glück, Philip Levine, and John Barth tell us why literature matters, why it is remarkable to actively take part in advancing one's culture by writing. This volume contributes not only to our understanding of writers and their works, but also to our understanding of the culture in which we live. The essays illustrate how each of our own stories develop, how they become intertwined, how culture itself is created and perpetuated simply by the act of writing such stories.
Originally part of the Hopwood Lecture series at the University of Michigan, these essays were presented in conjunction with the annual awarding of the Hopwood Prizes in creative writing. The internationally recognized awards are granted by the bequest of playwright Avery Hopwood (1884-1928), who sought to encourage student work in the fields of dramatic writing, fiction, poetry, and the essay.
The volume is edited and introduced by Nicholas Delbanco, Robert Frost Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature and Chair of the Hopwood Awards Committee, University of Michigan. He is also a novelist and author of seventeen books.
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