The Pinto Carver Essay Contest

Pinto Carver Essay Topic 2025

 

The Topic:

John McPhee tells us that when his youngest daughter, Martha, was seventeen, her English teacher wrote forty-seven words on the blackboard and asked members of the class to write a composition using all forty-seven words (The Patch, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018, p. 157).

Here are  those forty-seven words: aspersion, audacious, avarice, blanch, blight, brusque, buffeted, caprice, cataclysm, charlatan, collude, concomitantly, condign, contiguous, cynosure, decorum, depreciatory, desultory, diaphanous, dilatory, discursive, dispersion, éclat, effulgence, elucidate, emollient, empyreal, enervated, equivocal, erudite, felicity, fiscal, flaccid, fortuitous, gamut, gazette, gregarious, habitat, haggard, homogeneous, innovative, nectarine, oscillate, procrastinate, progeny, prognosticate, and recalcitrant.

In 750 words or fewer write a composition-- an essay, dialogue, letter, profile, perhaps a poem, any genre of your choosing--using all forty-seven words. Your work will be judged on the use of these words but also on its creativity, wit, and humor. At the bottom of your work write and sign: “I have used all forty-seven words.”

Eligibility: Current Liberal Arts Honors First Years (Class of 2028) and Sophomores (Class of 2027).

Specifications: 750 words or less

Awards:

1st Prize: $1500

2nd Prize: $1000

3rd Prize: $500

Honorable Mention: $250

Submission Deadline: Submit your essay through the LASSO scholarship portal by Wednesday, January 29, 2025 at 11:59 pm.

The scholarship committee reserves the right to withhold awards in the absence of prize worthy essays.