Announcing JASNA's 2025 Essay Contest Winners
September 15, 2025
Our 2025 Essay Contest drew many thoughtful, creative entries—proof that Jane Austen continues to inspire today’s students around the world! We’re delighted to announce this year’s nine winners and share their essays on our website, along with a list of the students awarded Honorable Mention.
This year’s assignment, open to students in high school, college, and graduate school worldwide, invited participants to select something Austen used in her novels—a word, situation, object, or activity—and compare or contrast its use in two different scenes. The winning essays explore a remarkable variety of “somethings,” from walking and windows to cold tea, thieves, acting, characters named Jane, and more.
The 2025 contest was another record-breaker, drawing more than 560 entries from students across the United States, Canada, and 45 other countries (up from 34 last year), including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Morocco, Vietnam, New Zealand, Bulgaria, the Maldives, and Fiji, among others. Entries were reviewed in two rounds by 36 judges, and the top three essays in each division received scholarship awards. First-place winners were also invited to attend JASNA’s Annual General Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.
Congratulations to this year’s winners, and sincere thanks to all who participated—including the screeners and judges!
High School Division
- First Place: Eva Nurit Rotberg
“Jane Was So Admired, Nothing Could Be Like It”: Exploring Austen’s Janes
- Second Place: Sumin Lee
Cold Tea in Emma: Moral Temperature and Social Breach
- Third Place: Lillian X. Zhang
Pretense and Principles: What Lies Beneath Performance in Fanny Price’s World
College/University Division
- First Place: Emily Shanmugam
The Gentry in Jeopardy: An Analysis of Thievery in Emma
- Second Place: Alyssa C. Pierce
In Defense of Triviality: Hats, Filigree Baskets, and Female Agency in Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility
- Third Place: Dylan Mendez
“Scruples of Delicacy”: The Many Masks of Emma Woodhouse
Graduate School Division
- First Place: Elizabeth Riddick
An Open and Shut Case(ment): The Form and Function of Windows in Jane Austen’s Novels
- Second Place: Wanas Radwan
Navigating Nothingness in Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion
- Third Place: Cynthia Varady
In Walks and Ways: The Symbolic Utility of Walking in Pride and Prejudice and Emma
JASNA sponsors the Essay Contest each year to foster the study and appreciation of Jane Austen's works in new generations of readers. The 2026 contest topic and rules will be published in November 2025, and we will begin accepting submissions in February 2026.
