Announcing the 2022 Neureuther Essay Contest Award Winners

The Washington University Libraries are pleased to announce the winners of the 35th annual Neureuther Student Book Collection Essay Competition. Named for Carl Neureuther, a 1940 graduate of the Washington University School of Business who set up an endowed book fund for the University Libraries, the contest was designed to inspire reading for pleasure among students and to encourage the development of personal book collections.

The competition is open to all full-time Washington University students, and awardees win four cash prizes of $1000 and $500 at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Participants submit brief essays about the books in their collections. Washington University faculty members read the essays and select the award-winning entries.

This year, Rebecca Hanssens-Reed, a PhD candidate in comparative literature—international writers track, won first place in the graduate category for her essay, “Out of Print, Out of the Closet: Building a Library and Community through Queer Translation.” Clarissa Tardiff, a PhD candidate in clinical psychology, came in second with “A Newlywed Soundtrack.”

In the undergraduate category, Violet Cooper, a first-year student majoring in English literature, was awarded the first prize for her essay, “Confessions of an Amateur Librarian.” Jonah Goldberg, a senior majoring in linguistics, with minors in writing and psychology, won second place for “What Strange World are we Visiting Next? Ours.”

The organizing committee thanks all the students who participated in this year’s contest. Neureuther competition’s award-winning essays, from 2003 to the present, can be accessed on Open Scholarship.