Alysia has stopped updating her blog, and I really love this challenge, so I have decided to host it for the upcoming year.

The purpose of the challenge is super simple: make a goal to read books by and/or about people of color throughout the year to encourage other readers to have a more diverse reading experience and to support diversity in the publishing industry.

The challenge runs Jan. 1, 2016 – Dec. 31, 2016. Books read before Jan. 1, 2016 do not count toward the challenge.

Leave a comment or make a post stating what level you want to participate in and link up below. If you don’t have a book blog, but have Goodreads or Library Thing, etc., you may use that to participate and post your links as long as you set up a public dedicated shelf for the challenge.

• Definition of a person of color from Wikipedia
• POC Reading Challenge blog
• Alysia’s list of links and resources

Books can be any format, genre, or length that have been published at any time as long as they are by or about a person of color. Choose your books as you go or create a to-read list! Use the books for other challenges! It’s all good. Again: the only requirements are that the books be by or about a person of color and read in this year.

Oh, and to clarify: “about” means a main character, not a secondary or tertiary character. If a book has multiple narrators or POVs and one of them is a POC, it counts. Otherwise, nah.

At the end of the year, I’ll do a giveaway for people who meet or exceed their initially stated challenge goal. So that means you can go up a level (but not down!) as the year goes on. The only requirements will be signing up here (sign ups close on Dec. 1, 2016) and writing a wrap up post or linking to your completed shelf by the end of the year.

And that’s it! Sign up below, grab the button, and spread the word. I’ll answer any questions in the comments.

Welcome to the Diversity on the Shelf Challenge!