Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams, a lecturer in UNC Wilmington’s English department, was announced as one of ten authors to win the 2013 Whiting Writer’s Award.

“I had absolutely no idea I was in the running,” Abrams said about learning she had won the award. “It was a beautiful surprise.”

Since 1985, the Whiting Writer’s Award has selected promising authors, poets and playwrights early in their careers. The winners, who were announced on Oct. 21 in New York, are anonymously nominated and selected annually. Each winner receives $50,000 from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation.

The 2012 novella published by Madras Press that won Abrams the award, “The Man Who Danced with Dolls,” portrays the family legacy of a translator.

“‘The Man Who Danced with Dolls’ is a portrait of a family’s legacy—the language of their memories, the secrets of their buried past, and the subway busker whose wordless dancing punctuates their lives,” as described by Madras Press.

Abrams said her health was the biggest obstacle she faced while writing the 59-page piece.

“I was very sick when writing that novella, and terribly behind schedule the whole time,” Abrams said. “I don’t think I would have found the will to write at all had it not been for Sumanth Prabhaker, who runs Madras. I owe that book to his brilliance and gentle persistence.” 

Prabhaker said the idea that Madras Press contributed to Abram’s success was a “miserable lie.”

“It was our good fortune to be the right publisher for the story she was working on at the time, just as the Whiting Foundation is now in the deeply enviable position of counting her among its award’s recipients,” Prabhaker said. “Though I’m sure there will be many more awards to come, there are not enough of them out there for the body of work I’m anticipating from Hannah.”

Abrams said she scribbled herself some advice on a post-it-note at one point.

The note read: “Read, read, read. And, even when impossible, force yourself to the blank page, sit down, open your terrible mouth, and sing.”

Michelle Britt, also a lecturer at UNCW’s English department, said she could not think of anyone who deserved the award more than Abrams. She believes the award will temper a collaborative bond between the English and creative writing departments. 

“I think it’s going to not only change her life, but I think it’s going to have a very positive impact on our university, and both our creative writing and our English department, and show that you can marry the two with the writing aspect and the composition aspect,” Britt said.

UNCW junior Taylor Patrick Smith, who has taken a writing course with Abrams, said he’s looking forward to the work Abrams is going to produce as a result of this award.

“It’s no surprise that a professor like Hannah, who cares about her students, not just as students, but as equal human beings, is being rewarded,” Smith said.

In addition to the needs of her students, Abrams is also concerned with the needs of animals. Madras Press is a non-profit publisher, so the proceeds for each publication go to the charity of the author’s choice. For “The Man Who Danced with Dolls,” Abrams chose Wilmington’s New Hanover Humane Society.

On what winning the Whiting Award means to her, Abrams recalled the words of a poet.

“Seamus Heaney said that the Whiting was a ‘laying on of hands’ from other writers which ‘marks the soul for the better,’” Abrams commented. “What could be more wonderful than that?”

Abrams has also been awarded a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship (2011-2012), a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award (2010), a Lavonne Adams Award (2007), a Byington Award (2007), and a Hartshook Fellowship (2004). She is currently working on “The Following Sea,” a memoir about growing up on a cutter ship.