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Audre Lorde Writing Prize

This annual award is named in honor of Audre Lorde (1934-1992), an intersectional feminist writer and civil rights activist who wrote the foundational text "Sister Outsider" in 1984.

The award is given annually by the Augustana Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program to recognize excellence in scholarship in women, gender and sexuality studies at the undergraduate level.

The deadline is March 7, 2022.

Awards are presented in three categories:

• Short analytical essay (less than 10 pages)

• Long analytical essay (more than 10 pages)

• Personal/reflective prose (perhaps a series of journals you've written for a class, or a paper that draws heavily on your own experience, or makes its point creatively, rather than analytically)

Entries will be accepted for student papers written in fall 2021, J-term 2022, and even as far back as spring 2021. So think back, check your files, and see what you've got. Make a plan to submit papers that you are completing now for this prize.

The department seeks entries that display excellent liberal arts scholarship and creativity at the undergraduate level. Entries should have a thesis or underlying insight that is skillfully supported and rhetorically effective. Since feminist scholars have influenced all academic fields, any course offered in the college could, potentially, be the basis for written work addressing historical, theoretical, social, psychological, artistic, and economic questions relevant to the Audre Lorde Award.

Winners will receive recognition at the Augustana Honors Convocation in May, and the Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Honors Tea, as well as a monetary award.

Entries are judged anonymously by faculty from other colleges.

Guidelines for submitting your paper:

• Remove any references to your name from the body of the paper itself.

• Provide a title page, with your name, paper title, course, instructor’s name, and the term in which it was written.

• On the title page, clearly identify which of the three categories your paper belongs to: short analytical, long analytical or personal/reflective prose.

• Submit one copy by email and one hard copy to Jennifer Milner, Swenson Hall of Geosciences, Room 102.

•  Winning papers will be printed in the Audre Lorde Writing Prize book and published in Augustana Digital Commons. (See winners from past years.)

For more information, contact Jennifer Heacock-Renaud or Umme Al-Wazedi.