Creative Writing alumnus Stef Hulskamp wins Afstudeerprijs (Graduation Prize)
- Creative Writing
- ArtEZ Prizewinner
On Friday evening, 10 November, Stef Hulskamp, alumnus of the Creative Writing course at ArtEZ in Arnhem, was awarded the Afstudeerprijs (Graduation Prize) for best graduation project for a Dutch or Flemish writing course. His winning work, Big Time in the Sun, is a mix of prose and image and deals with the impossibility of a happy ending. This year marked the ninth time the Graduation Prize was presented.
Over the past few months, students of the Word Art (Antwerp Conservatory), Image and Language (Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam), Writing for Performance (HKU Utrecht) and Creative Writing (ArtEZ Arnhem) courses were invited to enter their graduation projects, ranging from prose to poetry and from screenplays to scripts. An independent jury consisting of Mathieu Charles (theatre maker), Michel Krielaars, (NRC newspaper book editor), Frances Welling (De Internetgids editor) and Aline Lapeire (deBuren programme writer) judged these texts anonymously. From the entries, six works – all from the Creative Writing course – were nominated by the expert jury.
Big Time in the Sun
The judges called Big Time in the Sun 'an outsider: a short yet powerful text in English that uses typographic play and photographs, and peels off like an onion.' The work so fascinated and moved the judges that they unanimously voted it the favourite. 'As a reader, you land in a kind of tough joke, only to discover little by little that a chilling period is being looked back on', according to the judges.
A first
Remarkably, this is the first time the award, given to Dutch-language writing courses, has gone to an English-language work. The jury names this as the only point of doubt, but notes that there is nothing in the rules about the language used, and finds that the work was the strongest text in several areas. They do, however, encourage Hulskamp to publish in Dutch as well.
To the public
Hulskamp will receive a monetary award made available by the participating courses, and is invited to perform at the Winter Garden Festivalin April. Also, excerpts from the works of all six nominees were published on literary platform Notulen van het Onzichtbare (Minutes of the Invisible), and they were allowed to participate in the New Types Industry Day for literary creators and professionals. In the coming months, all the nominees, including the winner, will feature at various literary festivals.
Nominees and winner, © Christiaan Schulte
Previous winners
In previous years, the Graduation Prize was awarded to Ceren Uzuner (ArtEZ 2022), Jutta Callebaut (2021), Tessa van Rooijen (ArtEZ 2020), Lisa Huissoon (ArtEZ 2019), Selin Kuscu (2018), Yelena Schmitz (2017), Lotte de Vos (ArtEZ 2016) and Jorina van der Laan (ArtEZ 2015).
Creative Writing
Novice writers and storytellers who want to become full-fledged writers are in the right place on the higher professional education Creative Writing course in Arnhem. You get space there to experiment with all kinds of directions: from creating novels to writing for Virtual Reality, allowing you to experience what you want to master, what makes your writing heart beat faster and above all: what being a writer means to you.