Scholarship opportunity for African writers to study creative writing in London for FREE

The Kit de Waal Scholarship is offering one aspiring writer from Africa the chance to study creative writing for free at Birkbeck University‘s Department of English and Humanities. Brittle Paper reported.

Targeted at talented writers from disadvantaged background, the scholarship is the brain child of Kit de Waal, award winning British author of 'My Name is Leon'.

After securing the book deal with Penguin, de Waal told The Guardian UK she wants to use some of her advance to set up a creative writing scholarship to try to improve working-class representation in the arts.

“When I got a better deal than I ever thought I’d get, I wanted to do something that could make a difference, rather than just buy a car,” she says.

“I wanted to really change someone’s life. A creative writing master’s is a guarantee of absolutely nothing, but I wanted to give somebody the chance. A chance they’d never normally have, or even dare think they could have.”

The scholarship, at Birkbeck, University of London, gives one applicant a fully funded place on a creative writing master’s course, with travel, books and computer equipment for the duration of the part-time degree.

Deadline for the scholarship is February 15 and it is a fully funded scholarship.

See details on how to apply:

Applicants should apply for the MA Creative Writing here (http://www.bbk.ac.uk/study/2015/postgraduate/programmes/TMACWRIT_C/) and indicate clearly on their application form that they are applying for the Kit de Waal Scholarship.

Along with filling in the form, applicants must submit 5,000 words of their writing together with a personal statement of not more than 1,000. They must also fill in an application form for the award which is available here where they must make a statement of financial status:http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/research/research-bursaries-studentships-funding/arts-ma-bursaries

Applications for the Kit de Waal Scholarship are now open and will close on Monday 15 February 2016.

Further details about the MA Programme can be found here http://bit.ly/1nTm5ka

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