The Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Essay Competition encourages students at Washington University to read for enjoyment and to develop personal libraries throughout their lives.
The competition started in 1988 and the collection contains the award-winning essays of both undergraduate and graduate students from 2003 to present. Details about the Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Essay Competition are announced through the University Libraries.
Essays from 2026
The Weight of Memory: A Library of Fragments from the Soviet Steppe , Kim Lacey
Graduate winner: 1st place, 2026, 39th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
The Stories We Inherit and the Books That Question Them , Sanayah Mulla-Peroze
Undergraduate winner: 2nd place, 2026, 39th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
“Indelible Always”: Recollecting May Swenson , Sylvia Sukop
Graduate winner: 2nd place, 2026, 39th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
The Books That Bring Me Back to Her , Rosalynde Swidler
Undergraduate winner: 1st place, 2026, 39th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
Essays from 2025
The Given, The Loved, and The Found: A Series of Communications Regarding My Ever-Changing Book Collection , Joshua Miller
Undergraduate winner: 2nd place, 2025, 38th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
A History of Textuality: Foucault in the Margins of My Masculinity , Matthew Moore
Graduate winner: 2nd place, 2025, 38th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
Panel to Paragraph: How Comics Made Me a Writer , Amy Peltz
Graduate winner: 1st place, 2025, 38th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
"Those gentle wolves": Reclaiming Little Red Riding Hood , Grace Wereley-Bross
Undergraduate winner: 1st place, 2025, 38th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
Essays from 2024
My Mother’s Planned Parenthood: A Book Sale Elegy , Nicholas Dolan
Graduate winner: 2nd place, 2024, 37th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
A Lust Letter to Print: Understanding Human Carnality Through the Zines of the World , Eliana Jenkins
Undergraduate winner: 2nd place, 2024, 37th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
My Culture of One; Eight Relational Dances With My Books , Perry Parsons
Graduate winner: 1st place, 2024, 37th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
Unveiling the Comfort of Female Narratives: Tragedy, Identity, and Embodied Power , Brooke Sanchez
Undergraduate winner: 1st place, 2024, 37th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
Essays from 2023
My Library is Full of Ghosts , Elsa Chanez
Graduate winner: 2nd place, 2023, 36th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
"One Book, Never Just One Story" , Ella Dopke
Undergraduate winner: 2nd place, 2023, 36th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
The Great Plains and Growing Pains , Juliet Nisly
Undergraduate winner: 1st place, 2023, 36th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
Paging through Palimsests: Used Picture Books and Their Connection to Place , Danielle Ridolfi
Graduate winner: 1st place, 2023, 36th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
Essays from 2022
Confessions of an Amateur Librarian , Violet Cooper
Undergraduate winner: 1st place, 2022, 35th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
What Strange World are we Visiting Next”? “Ours , Jonah Goldberg
Undergraduate winner: 2nd place, 2022, 35th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
Out of Print, Out of the Closet: Building a Library and Community through Queer Translation , Rebecca Hanssens-Reed
Graduate winner: 1st place, 2022, 35th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
A Newlywed Soundtrack , Clarissa Tardiff
Graduate winner: 2nd place, 2022, 35th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
Essays from 2021
An Inheritance , Zenique Gardner Perry
Graduate winner: 2nd place, 2021, 34th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
Crossfires: Foreign Souls and Lands’ and Feminist Modernist Recovery in Translation , Sophie Levin
Graduate winner: 1st place, 2021, 34th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
Plants, Dishes, and Stray Bullets , Tirzah Reed
Undergraduate winner: 2nd place, 2021, 34th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
My Literary Web , Noah Slaughter
Undergraduate winner: 1st place, 2021, 34th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition
Essays from 2020
Birds of a Feather , Tian Geng
Undergraduate winner: 2d place, 2020 33nd Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition