The Award

• Up to ten writers will be awarded a writing residency in a cottage in Kent. The retreat, which can be for up to a month at a time, will offer uninterrupted time for professionally active writers to focus on their work – they will have exclusive use of the house for the duration of their retreat so they can focus solely on the task of writing.

• Award winners will also receive a bursary to support them taking up their residency: this can be used to cover costs such as care provision, or to buy time away from other work. It also covers the costs of accessing the residencies – whether through funding for travel or providing required support for disabled writers.

• The RSL will take a holistic approach to facilitating each of the writers in the Awards programme. Each writer’s schedule will be used to plan a meaningful residency of up to a month.

• The panel will be responsible for selecting up to ten excellent writers: the focus is on rewarding talent, so the nature and quality of the writer’s track record will be key factors in the selection process. The winners will be announced in summer 2025 and the residencies will commence from autumn 2025.

• The Award is administered in all respects in English by the Royal Society of Literature.

Eligible Authors

• Authors must be resident in the UK.

• Authors can be writers in any form, but their work must be for a public audience.

• Authors who enter the award must have published or produced a substantial piece of work (a play, screenplay, poetry collection, novel or monograph of non-fiction) in the previous five years to nominations opening.

• Authors must indicate in their applications which of the barriers to their writing career evidenced in the below RSL Fellows Census data they experience – or what other barrier they experience not listed, such as ethnicity or cultural background:

1. Geography – living outside of London and the South West of England. RSL Fellows resident in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland collectively account for 9% of the Fellowship (compared to 16% of the UK population). Of those who are resident in England (91%), only 10% live in the North and Midlands.
2. Education – not having formal qualifications of a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent. 94% of the RSL Fellowship hold a Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) or postgraduate qualification (compared to 33% of the UK population).
3. Social class as indicated by the occupation of the main earner in household – growing up in a household where the main earner was not in a professional occupation. 70% of the RSL Fellowship grew up in a household where the main earner was in a professional occupation (compared to 22% of the UK population).

Entry of Authors

• Authors who meet the eligibility criteria may submit their applications via the entry form on the RSL website during the Award’s opening window.

• Award winners will be selected by a specially-convened panel of RSL Fellows who will give priority to writers who do not have their own dedicated writing space and experience barriers to their literary careers. (Bernardine Evaristo will not be on the panel and therefore not involved in the Prize’s decision-making.)

• Priority will be given to writers who experience other barriers to taking up a life in writing, which could include geographical location, educational attainment or social class as indicated by the occupation of the main earner in the household they grew up in.

The deadline for entries is Friday 18 July 2025.

Each author must also complete an equal opportunities monitoring form, the information on which will be treated in the strictest confidence and not linked to submissions. If entering on behalf of someone else, please check the responses for accuracy prior to submitting.