Third Place: ($100) "Confessions of a Secular Mormon," by Ryan McIlvain of Florham Park, NJ.
- "This essay was a pleasure to read for its voice and its intellectual prowess. I admire it too, because there's an element of sure-footed humor at work here that wins over the audience. But most of all, I was compelled by the close and sharp observations that resonated on both the personal and social levels. If you can imagine a conflation of Will Bagley and David Foster Wallace, you might get a sense of the richness, insight, and intellectual play at work in this piece."
(I look forward to the day when I run across something like this about someone who actually reads this blog.)
