The Faculty Club’s Gold Lounge played host last night to a ceremony honoring the 12 awardees for this year’s Boothe Prize for Excellence in Writing.

According to the award’s Web site, “The Boothe prizes recognize and reward outstanding examples of expository and argumentative writing of first-year students in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) and the Introduction to the Humanities program (IHUM).”

The prizes, which have been awarded annually since 1981, are made possible by an endowment from the late D. Power Boothe Jr., Class of 1931, and his wife Catie. Each spring, an award ceremony is held to recognize the winners from the preceding spring, fall and winter quarters.

At last night’s event, the six winners — three each from the PWR and IHUM programs — were accompanied by the six students awarded honorable mention. IHUM teaching fellows, PWR 1 instructors and various faculty members and guests joined the students in celebration.

Gabriel Moyer, a teaching fellow in PWR and one of this year’s editors of the compilation “Boothe Prize Essays: Excellence in Writing at Stanford,” — the annual publication in which the 12 students’ essays are featured — explained how the prize-winning pieces were selected.

“We look for essays that engage with rhetoric in new and provocative ways,” she said. “We look for students who invent their own styles and whose writing breaks the bounds of traditional essays.”

Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education John Bravman spoke briefly before and after the ceremony, during which many of the honorees’ teachers presented the awards and spoke about their students’ writing.

All 12 received a copy of the Riverside Edition of the “Complete Works of Shakespeare” and a Boothe Prize certificate. Honorees also received a cash prize.

Scott Herndon, who teaches PWR, taught four of this year’s recipients. He said a particular style was typical of the award winners.

“Surprisingly, they tend to be quieter than others,” he said. “They possess great attention to detail, a real desire to figure things out and a determination to set their own agendas.”

Freshman Sarah Johnson, whose essay “Breaking the Watch Along With the Wedding Glass: Conceptions of Time in the Transition from Biblical to Rabbinic Judaism” won the IHUM prize for winter 2006, explained how her essay shaped her academic interests.

“I have no background in religion, so I was shocked to find out I had been nominated,” she said. “But taking this class has made me consider a minor in religion.”

A few of D. Power Boothe’s relatives also attended the ceremony and said they looked forward to reading the essays.

“We’ve read all the essays from the past years,” said one. “There are some especially fascinating topics this year.”

Moyer said that this year’s collection of essays may have been the best the committee has ever seen.

“This year’s writing excels far beyond previous years,” she said.

All of this year’s pieces were recently published and distributed in book form to attendees at the ceremony.

This year’s honorees in PWR were sophomore Kimber Lockhart and freshmen Jennifer Chin and Cecelia Yang. They are joined by honorable mention winners Nick Parker, a sophomore, and freshmen Matthew Gribble and Aaron Quiggle.

IHUM winners were sophomore Jessica Lee and freshmen Patrick Leahy and Sarah Johnson. They are complemented by honorable mention winners Julie Byren, a sophomore, and Nathan Pflueger and Jason Dunford, both freshmen.

A list of the 12 winners and copies of their prize-winning essays will be available on the award’s Web site, http://boothe.stanford.edu, in the near future.