A seven year old in Virginia who was born with no hands recently won a national award for her penmanship.
Anaya Ellick, a first grader at Greenbrier Christian Academy in Chesapeake, won a Nicholas Maxim Special Award for Excellence in Manuscript Penmanship. She received $1,000 and a large trophy.
Ellick, who does not need prosthetics to write, “holds a pencil between her arms and stands at her desk to get the right angle for writing,” CNN reports.
The quality of her script “stunned” the judges, Kathleen Wright, director of the competition run by educational company Zaner-Bloser, told ABC News.
Ellick also ties her own shoes and dresses herself, her parents, Bianca Middleton and Gary Ellick, told WTKR.
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Write to Olivia B. Waxman at olivia.waxman@time.com