Left to right: Julie Ansley & Jill Heard (family members of Nellie Ansley Reeves), librarian Cathy Palmer, Tom Hitchner & Arsineh Ghazarian & librarian Jim Crook

The winners of the Libraries’ 2004 Nellie Ansley Reeves Student Essay Contest were recognized at a library event on April 13. Arsineh Ghazarian and Tom Hitchner each received $500 in prize money for their winning essays on the theme, “The Places Reading Has Taken Me.” Ghazarian, a junior pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Psychology, was born in Iran, and immigrated to the United States when she was three years old. Her essay is a reflection of her struggles with learning to read English. Hitchner is a first-year graduate student in the English department, where he is specializing in Modernist literature. His essay, an examination of one of the places reading literally took him, was inspired by a literary pilgrimage he took during a year at Oxford University.

The Libraries host the contest each year, which is open to all registered UCI students. It is made possible by a generous gift from Nellie Ansley Reeves, a former benefactor of the Libraries who established a library endowment to encourage a love of reading and writing in UCI students.