Applications are open for Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarship 2021. It can be difficult for writers, before they become established, to write while simultaneously earning a living. To help meet this need the MMF annually awards a small number of Morland Writing Scholarships, with the aim being to allow each Scholar the time to produce the first draft of a completed book. The Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarship is open to anyone writing in the English language who was born in Africa, or both of whose parents were born in Africa.​

Grant

The Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarship has the following benefits

• Scholars writing fiction will receive a grant of £18,000, paid monthly over the course of twelve months.
• At the discretion of the Foundation, Scholars writing non-fiction, who require additional research time, could receive an additional grant, paid over a period of up to eighteen months.​

Scholar’s Undertaking

• At the end of each month scholars must send the Foundation 10,000 new words that they will have written over the course of the month.
• Scholars are also asked to donate to the MMF 20% of whatever they subsequently receive from the book they write during the period of their Scholarship. This includes revenues as a result of film rights, serialisations or other ancillary revenues arising from the book written during the Scholarship period.
• These funds will be used to support other promising writers. The 20% return obligation should be considered a debt of honour rather than a legally binding obligation.

Qualifications

• To qualify for the Scholarship a candidate must submit an excerpt from a piece of work of between 2,000 – 5,000 words, written in English that has been published and offered for sale,. This will be evaluated by a panel of readers and judges set up by the MMF.
• The work submitted will be judged purely on literary merit. It is not the purpose of the Scholarships to support academic or scientific research; or works of special interest such as religious or political writings. Submissions or proposals of this nature do not qualify.

Scholarship Requirement

• The only condition imposed on the Scholars during the year of their Scholarship is that they must write. They will be asked to submit by email at least 10,000 new words every month until they have finished their book, or their Scholarship term has ended.
• If the first draft of the book is completed before the year is up; payments will continue while the Scholar edits and refines their work.

Proposed Work

• The candidates should submit a description of between 400 – 1,000 words of the work they intend to write. The proposal must be for a full length book of no fewer than 80,000 words.
• The MMF does not accept proposals for collaborative writing or short story collections. The proposal should be for a completely new work, not a work in progress, and must be in English.

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