Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Lin-Manuel Miranda, an alumni of Wesleyan University, is among the committee members who will choose the first recipient of the university’s newly established Wesleyan University Hamilton Prize for Creativity—a four-year full-tuition scholarship that will be awarded to the incoming Wesleyan student of the Class of 2021 whose creative written work is judged to best reflect the originality, artistry and dynamism embodied in Hamilton.
Worth as much as $200,000, the prize was established in honor of Wesleyan alumni Miranda (class of 2002, and Honorary Doctorate 2015) and director Thomas Kail (class of 1999), who will serve as honorary chairs of the committee.
“Bringing the Wes community together to select the first recipient of the Hamilton Prize for Creativity fills me with love and gratitude,” said Miranda. “I am humbled to be a member of such a talented group of passionate, creative forces.”
Kail added, “Wesleyan gave us all the freedom to explore our creativity without boundaries or limits. Working alongside Wes alums to choose an original written work for the first-ever Hamilton Prize is an honor.”
The submission deadline is January 1, 2017. For full details and submission guidelines, visit Wesleyan.edu/HamiltonPrize.
The Hamilton Prize for Creativity Selection Committee also includes alumni Carter Bays, Amy Bloom, Daniel Handler, Maggie Nelson, Amanda Palmer, Mary Roach, Bozoma Saint John, Kaneza Schaal, Tierney Sutton, Craig Thomas, Matthew Weiner, and Simone White.
“The creative accomplishments of the members of the Hamilton Prize selection committee are a testament to Wesleyan’s outsized role as an incubator of some of today’s most boundary-breaking thinkers, artists and writers,” said Wesleyan president Michael S. Roth. “I look forward with great enthusiasm to finding out which incoming Wesleyan student will be chosen by the committee to receive this extraordinary honor.”
The selection committee will announce the recipient of the scholarship in spring 2017.
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