Princeton Classics is pleased to congratulate graduate student Thu Truong on being named the 2025 winner of the John J. Winkler Memorial Prize. Among the field's most prestigious student accolades, the Prize is given annually to the best eligible essay by a classical studies student in North America and carries a cash award of $2,000. Truong was awarded the Prize for her paper “Ocean Vuong, Intertextuality, and the Limits of Interpretation.”

Administered by the John J. Winkler Memorial Trust through Oberlin College, the Winkler Memorial Prize is intended to honor the memory of John J. (“Jack”) Winkler, a classical scholar, teacher, and political activist for radical causes both within and outside the academy, who died of AIDS in 1990 at the age of 46. Believing that the profession as a whole discourages young scholars from exploring neglected or disreputable topics, and from applying unconventional or innovative methods to their scholarship, Winkler endowed a cash prize to the author of the best undergraduate or graduate essay in any risky or marginal field of classical studies.

In a testament to this year's competitive field of applicants, the jury also awarded an extraordinary honorable mention to Kit Pyne-Jaeger of Columbia University. Previous Princetonian winners of the Winker Memorial Prize include Danielle Meinrath *14 (2008), Donna Zuckerberg *14 (2012), Jessica Wright *16 (2016), and Prof. Brooke Holmes (2004).