RSL launches free writing residencies in Bernardine Evaristo's Ramsgate cottage

The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is launching the Scriptorium Awards, offering free writing residencies in President Bernardine Evaristo’s Ramsgate cottage. 

The retreats can be for up to a month at a time and the aim is to offer uninterrupted time for "professionally active" writers to focus on their projects. 

Participating writers could be finishing a manuscript against a deadline or starting a new project. They will have exclusive use of the house so they can focus on writing but will not be permitted to bring guests.

"The RSL Scriptorium Awards will reward excellent writers of all literary genres who are struggling to find the time and space to write," Evaristo said. "Many writers don’t have a dedicated writing room to themselves, and there might be financial or family demands that are challenges to completing writing projects [...] As a society, we need to build a more supportive infrastructure to help writers from every background thrive and, in so doing, keep literature, in all its life-enhancing manifestations, alive."

An RSL census carried out last year revealed that 86% of Fellows considered writing to be their primary occupation but the majority (66%) said writing was not their main source of income. The research also showed that Fellows who are poets were even less likely to receive their main income from writing, with just 38% saying that poetry was their main source of income.

The RSL’s census research also showed that the RSL’s Fellowship is skewed towards those living in London, who are highly educated and who come from a household where the main earner was in a professional occupation. The RSL Scriptorium Awards will take into consideration some of the structural barriers facing writers today, as the "focus is on rewarding talent, therefore the nature and quality of the writers’ track record".