The Morland Scholarship for African Writers 2015 - Tanzania

Applications are now open the Morland Scholarship for Writers for 2015. Three scholarships of £18,000 (US $30,000) each will be awarded to writers who were born in Africa or whose parents were born in Africa. The 2014 scholarship attracted over 350 applications.

About the Scholarship
This scholarship is sponsored by the Miles Morland Foundation. The foundation’s focus is culture and education with a particular interest in writing. Other projects supported by the foundation include the Caine Prize for African Writing. 

The three successful applicants will each receive a grant of £18,000, paid monthly over the course of the 2015 calendar year. Each of the scholarship recipients will also have the opportunity to be mentored by an established author or publisher.

The scholarship is intended for writers who want to write a full-length book of 80,000 words or more. To this end, the writers will be asked to submit via email 10,000 new words every month until they have finished their book. The scholarship will terminate if a writer fails to submit the required work on time without prior authorisation.

Another, somewhat unusual, requirement is that the three writers are expected to donate back to the Miles Morland Foundation 20 per cent of the subsequent earnings from what they write during their scholarship year. This is not a legally binding condition, as it was in 2014, but instead viewed as a ‘debt of honour’.

Applications are judged on literary merit. Proposed books can be on any subject though the judges will show preference to works which relate to Africa. 

Who Can Apply

The Morland Scholarship for Writers is open to anyone who was born in Africa or both of whose parents were born in Africa. If a writer was not born in Africa and only one of their parents was born in Africa, they are still eligible to apply provided they can prove they are a full-time African residents, defined as having spent at least nine of the past twelve months in Africa.

In order to complete the application process, applicants must include in their application a published piece of writing. For the purposes of this scholarship published is defined as writing that has appeared in a printed book, journal or magazine that has been offered for sale.

Both fiction and non-fiction writers can apply, though the organisers express some concern about the ability of non-fiction writers to meet the monthly word limit requirement outlined above. Writers wishing to undertake projects in the fields of poetry, playwriting, academic writing and scientific research are not eligible for this scholarship.

How to Apply

To apply for the Morland Scholarship 2015 writers must provide via email:

• A sample piece of published prose between 2000 and 5000 words. This can be an individual piece or an extract from a longer work.
• A description between 200 and 500 words of the project they would complete if successful in their application. This must be a new work, not a work in progress. 
• A  brief biography up to 300 words. The organisers advise to include in this ‘anything in your background suggesting that you have the ability and discipline to write a full-length book.’

Applications close on 31 October 2014. The successful writers will be announced in December and commence their scholarship in 2015. For full entry details visit theMiles Morland Foundation website.