First round of 2022 SoA awards go to Boix, Parker and Trethewey

Writers Louisa Adjoa Parker, Leo Boix and Rachel Trethewey are the recipients of the Society of Authors’ first round of Authors Foundation and K Blundell Trust awards for 2022. 

The SoA has awarded financial grants worth £184,750 in total to 55 authors, supporting their ongoing projects, with grants awarded twice a year. 

The K Blundell Trust, endowed by the late Kathleen Blundell, gives grants of up to £6,000 to British authors under the age of 40 whose work aims to increase social awareness. The Authors’ Foundation was set up from donations by authors in 1984 and has received contributions from writers, charitable trusts and the Royal Literary Fund.

Among the recipients of the May 2022 round of grants are writer and poet Parker, Latinx poet Boix and biographer Trethewey. 

Their writing projects range from a memoir of intersectional experience of domestic abuse, racism, sexism and life in a low-income family, to poetry that explores what it means to be a British Latinx gay poet born in Argentina who lives and works in the UK.

Parker, whose first two poetry collections were published by Cinnamon Press, and her third, How to Wear a Skin, by Indigo Dreams, said: “Receiving awards such as this, as well as being an enormous help financially, also boosts my confidence in my work and belief in myself”. She added that the grant would enable her to devote time to finishing her memoir, which will be published in 2023 by Little Toller Books. 

Boix, author of the collection Ballad of a Happy Immigrant (Chatto & Windus) and previous recipient of the Bart Wolffe Poetry Prize Award, the Keats-Shelley Prize and an English PEN Award, added: “The Society of Authors’ Foundation and K Blundell Trust grant will allow me valuable time to write, edit and finish my second poetry collection.”

Trethewey, author of four non-fiction books including The Churchill Girls (The History Press), said the grant should help fund her project about mothers and motherhood. “The award will allow me to complete original research in archives in America, Norway and Britain,” she said. 

The deadline for applications for the next round of grants for work in progress is 1st July 2022, for distribution in October.