Update: the essay competition has closed. Submissions for the design competition are due May 1. 

Our Reading in Hues Book Club is excited to announce two spirng semester contests - opening soon! The book club is an initiative that our interns devised in 2020 to provide opportunities for our community members to learn, connect, and grow. Students have responded enthusiastically to the book club, describing its monthly meetings as a source of community and an oppotunity to rediscover thier love of non-required reading. Check out the club's remaining books and meeting dates for the rest of the semester here. This semester, we are offering a Reading in Hues essay contest, and a Reading in Hues design contest to provide more ways to engage members of the UVA communithy with this effort and to help it contiue to reach more students next year. 
While Reading in Hues celebrates books written by women and gender-nonconforming authors of color such as the ones on the Women's Center's 20/20 Reading Challenge list, the club is a broadly inclusive effort open to all. Like the Women's Center as a whole, Reading in Hues aims to engage people of all genders as well as those with different backgrounds, identities, ethnicities, and worldviews. Book club participants can choose the time commitment that suits them, reading as few or as many of the club's selections as they like, and free copies of the books are offered to the first 10 registrants for each of the club's meetings.

Design Contest 

Help us represent the spirit of Reading in Hues to students across Grounds by creating a new graphic for use in publicizing the book club throughout the 2022-2023 year!

Like the center's podcast, Speaking in Hues, Reading in Hues will benefit from a graphic that conveys the club's name and its purpose clearly and in a way that is compatible with the visual style of the Women's Center overall. We encourage participating artists to draw on their own experience or any inspiration they choose to inform their design. 

Submit designs via this submission form by May 1. 

The winning submissions will be selected through a series of private and public votes. The winning artist will receive a prize package including a variety of coveted art supplies of their choosing. 

Essay Contest

The Reading in Hues essay competition will focus on the joyful experiences of women of color at UVA. We are interested in hearing from people whose stories of hope, friendship, strength and resilience through joy might help WOC in the UVA community feel held and heard, seen and loved, uplifted and known in all their intellectual and emotional complexity.

The essay competition has closed. 

The winning essay will be selected by a panel of writers including WOC alumni and faculty and staff.  The winning essay will be published this spring in Iris, the student-written and edited online magazine hosted by the Women's Center. 

In an essay of 500-1,000 words, please reflect upon the following prompt:
Tell us about your experience(s) of WOC JOY — fleeting, enduring, sustaining, triumphant, humbling, formative moments, months, or years of what you have come to know as JOY — during your time at UVA.