Winner Announced for the Adrian Van Sinderen Poster Prize

November 6, 2020

The judging committee of the Adrian Van Sinderen Book Collecting Prizes is pleased to announce that Sophia J. Zhao ’23 of Pauli Murray College has been selected as the winning designer in this year’s poster competition. Sophia’s poster will be used to advertise this year’s competition for the Van Sinderen Book Collecting Prizes. Lauren Gatta ’21 of Grace Hopper College, Sidney Hirschman ’22 of Jonathan Edwards College, and Oscar Taperell ’24 of Grace Hopper College were all awarded honorable mention for their submissions. 

For more than half a century, student bibliophiles have been receiving prizes for the quality of their book collections, thanks to the generosity of Yale alumnus Adrian Van Sinderen (Class of 1910). In 1957 Van Sinderen established two prizes, awarding $1,000 to seniors and $700 to sophomores, in order to encourage undergraduates to collect books, build up libraries of their own, and read for pleasure and learning. In 2002 a poster competition was established with a $500 prize awarded to the winning designer.

The committee broke with tradition this year and awarded a first prize of $1,000 to Sophia for her body of work, shown here, selecting the first image as the winning poster. The committee congratulates her and the honorable mention recipients.