News release: 2012 JASNA Essay Contest Winners Announced
A panel of nine judges has now completed assessing nearly 80 submissions in this year’s Jane Austen Society Essay Contest with entries from all over the world. Among the winners was Ms. Christina A. Denny of St. John’s University, Queens, NY, whose essay is entitled, “Why “Willoughby”? Resisting the Familiar in Sense and Sensibility.” She received First prize in the Graduate division. The JASNA website lists her awards, and her essay will be published there.
She is entitled to free registration and two nights’ lodging at the Jane Austen Society’s Annual General Meeting, this year to be held in Brooklyn, New York, October 5th, 6th, and 7th. There will be 750 JASNA members in attendance, and her work will be acclaimed at the banquet on Saturday evening, October 6th.
Ms. Denny identified her mentor in this enterprise as Professor Amy King of St. John’s University, 8000 Utopia Parkway, Queens, NY 11439. Both of them will receive a complimentary one-year membership in JASNA, including subscriptions to Persuasions and the JASNA News. Additionally Christina will be presented with a gift set of Jane Austen’s novels in the Norton Critical Editions.
The JASNA Essay Contest is highly competitive and consists of two rounds in each of three divisions—high school, college, and graduate school. In the first round three expert judges rank as many as 40 essays in each division. Only the top handful of these go on to the second round in which each of the nine judges reads and ranks all the finalists. The resulting top three winners in each division thus represent the best of these young writers. We are sure Jane Austen herself would be proud of them, as are we all.
Prof. Eric W. Nye, Essay Contest Chair,
Department of English
University of Wyoming
Laramie, WY 82071
nye@uwyo.edu
307.766.3244
Leave a Reply