Cornell University and the University of Notre Dame have announced Georgette Kelly as the winner of the new “Hope on Stage” international playwriting contest for her play “I Carry Your Heart.”

Kelly will receive a $10,000 cash prize, and her play will be presented at both the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca April 27–30, 2017, and at the Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles May 18–20, 2017.

The play is part of the Hope and Optimism initiative of Cornell and Notre Dame. Funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the project aims to explore the theoretical, empirical and practical dimensions of hope, optimism, despair, pessimism and related states through creative projects.

“Those of us working on the Hope and Optimism initiative are really excited about the ‘Hope on Stage’ aspect of the project,” said Andrew Chignell, Cornell associate professor of philosophy. “We’ve been funding work by social scientists and philosophers that examines the nature, role and importance of states like hope and despair in our lives. But we wanted to have a more ‘public’ component to the grant as well – and this, together with our ‘Hope on Screen’ contest – is it.

“The response to our call for submissions was incredible: We had almost 800 submissions and had to double the size of our expert committee just to read through all of them. We’re excited to work with Georgette Kelly and our two directors, Jeremy Webb and Jessica Hanna, as we work toward staging the world premiere of ‘I Carry Your Heart' next spring.”