A Booker Prize winning author is letting her seaside cottage in Kent out as a writers’ retreat – with those selected able to stay for a month for free.
Bernadine Evaristo jointly won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2019 for her book Girl, Woman, Other alongside Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments – an achievement which saw her become the first black woman to win literature’s top prize.
Now, through the Royal Society of Literature (RSL), she is offering her home in Ramsgate for a year to “professionally active writers” to allow them to focus on their projects.
The double-fronted cottage, built around 1900, was a former school.
The author is president of the RSL. The use of her home forms the prize for the new RSL Scriptorium Awards. The winners will have exclusive use of the property for up to a month at a time.
But they will not be permitted to bring guests and are advised the property “has been designed to be as free from distractions as possible”.
The author explains: “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.
“Some of the most important writers might not be commercially successful but they are absolutely culturally essential and instrumental in moving the arts and society forwards. Yet literature receives the least public funding out of all the art forms and most writers earn very little, which is no reflection on the quality of their writing. 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.”
It quotes recent figures which revealed most authors earned just £7,000 a year.
The RSL Scriptorium Awards “will offer space and solitude to ten writers a year, supporting them to sustain their living as authors”.
Adds Evaristo: “The focus is on rewarding talent, therefore the nature and quality of the writers’ track record will be key factors in the selection process.”
The application process for the awards will begin in the spring with writers able to apply through the RSL’s website.
