Judges' Comments

The judges were impressed with both the writer’s range of focus and her depth of  detail. In her essay, Nevills manages to use effective analysis and thorough research to  explore her topic fully. Her writing gives the reader a fresh perspective on the troubling  resurgence of an old disease. 

Maria Sophia Carrillo Hernandez's essay, "Open Doors," introduces the reader to  a terrific and moving memoir, The Little Locksmith (1943), by Katharine Butler  Hathaway, an account of how she came to terms with her life-long disability caused by  tuberculosis. Hernandez's sensitive literary response to the text is interwoven with  background material about the disease and, crucially, set in the context of current  concepts in disability studies. Hernandez dedicates her work to "noticing" Hathaway--not  turning away from looking at her disability. 

For her essay "'The Painter of Human Misery': Love and Suffering in Pablo  Picasso's Mother and Child," Cristina Anillo researched this 1901 painting from Picasso's  Blue Period, a painting about which little has been written. The essay offers a detailed  and compassionate account of the painting's subject, as well as scholarly background for  the painting's context in Picasso's career and the iconography of the mother and child in  European art. What stands out is Anillo's evocative description of the painting--even  before the reader actually sees the image, the beautiful piece is already visualized.