No

Applications will be accepted between 1st July 2023 and 18th September 2023. We will acknowledge receipt but, unless we have a query, you won’t hear from us again unless you reach the shortlist. The awards will be announced in November.

Please upload the five requested documents using the application form on our website. This can be found by clicking on the blue bar along the top of the website or by clicking on the ‘Writing Scholarship Application Form’ from the drop-down menu.

It must have appeared in a printed book, journal or magazine that has been offered for sale. Publication in a book, magazine or blog that is free and not offered for sale is not eligible. Please note that an excerpt from an airline, college, association, or similar free magazine is not acceptable. Being published on Kindle is acceptable; it is the only online medium that is. Other forms of online appearance are not acceptable. Please give us sufficient detail of where the published work has appeared to allow it to be verified without effort on our part. We have limited resources and are unable to contact publishers on your behalf. 

No. If you do not meet the requirements set out above please do not submit an entry. Good luck with getting your work published in future years after which we will be happy to receive a submission from you.

Defining who is “African” is difficult. The Scholarships are meant to help African – not European or American – authors, or people of African origin who have emigrated to other continents. This is why both your parents must have been born in Africa if you yourself were not. We have introduced one exception to this. If you were not born in Africa and only one of your parents was born there you will qualify if you can show documentary proof that you are, at the time of application, a full-time resident of Africa (defined as having spent at least nine of the previous twelve months in Africa).

2,000 – 5,000 words. Please note it should be a single submission from one piece of published work. Please do not send two or more submissions.

We discourage this. If it did not get you a scholarship before, it probably won’t this time. We would prefer to see something we have not seen before.

Applications should be uploaded using the application form on our website. This can be accessed by clicking on the blue banner on any page of our website entitled ‘Apply for 2023 Morland Writing Scholarship’.

The purpose of the Scholarships is to promote literature and good writing. Submissions, including non-fiction submissions, will be judged solely on literary merit. Before you submit an entry ask yourself, or ask an objective friend, “does my entry show literary merit?” If the answer is “no” please do not make a submission.

No, but please note that works which relate to Africa are likely to be preferred by the judges.

A scan of the information page of your passport or another official document evidencing your place of birth.

The shortlist will be published in November and the winners announced in December 2023. At that time we will send an email to unsuccessful candidates, thanking them for their submission and informing them of the judges’ decision. Shortlisted candidates will be contacted in November and asked to supply us with further information regarding their personal circumstances as well as their writing plans.

You will be expected to submit a proposal of up to 1,000 words of the work you intend to write during your scholarship year. The judges give close scrutiny to these proposals.

Please note that if you are shortlisted for a Morland Writing Scholarship, you will be asked to send us a 3,000 – 4,000 words “chapter” of the book you are proposing to write on your scholarship year to help the judges assess your ability. Writers will be notified that they are on the shortlist at the end of October. Shortlisters will then have 15 days to return the sample “chapter”. In view of that, please do some advance thinking about the sample “chapter” you will have to provide if you are shortlisted. 

No. The scholarship is intended to enable you to write a completely new work, not to finish a work in progress. A “new work” is one which you have not yet begun writing.

No, examples of published work must be in prose.

No

Please tell us in a biography of 200 – 300 words something about yourself and your background. Please do not submit a job application type CV or résumé.

See above regarding the necessity to submit a scan of your passport or other official document. If you qualify because both of your parents were born in Africa, please attach evidence of this (preferably the information page of their passports). If you qualify because you were not born in Africa but only one of your parents was, then you will have to show easily verified evidence that you have lived in Africa for at least nine of the past twelve months. If both of your parents were born in Africa the residence requirement is waived.