Penny Black

Royal Literary Fund

Founded in 1790, the RLF (Royal Literary Fund) is a UK charity that helps writers in financial need and annually delivers over £5 million in grants, education, and outreach programmes. The RLF offers a range of grants to professional writers needing short-term to long-term financial support who might be in debt, facing reduced income or unable to write due to a change in circumstances, sickness, disability or age. For over two centuries and through our commitment to supporting literary excellence and representation in contemporary writing, we have been able to support many writers who have gone on to produce some of their most influential and best-known works, including Anna Burns, Margaret Busby, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Joseph Conrad, Elizabeth Jennings, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Doris Lessing, Edith Nesbit, Mervyn Peake, Monique Roffey, Ali Smith, Bram Stoker, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dylan Thomas, and Antonia White. The RLF Education scheme has been running since 1999, employing over 650 writers as Writing Fellows at over 100 institutions across the UK, from Aberdeen to Aberystwyth, Belfast to Brighton. Writing Fellows are trained to be part of a select group of professional writers drawn from a wide range of fiction and non-fiction genres. Their work is to foster good writing practice across all disciplines and media by working for higher education institutions and their students. We recruit posts for universities across various fields of study, including the Arts, Sciences, Law or within Student Services. Many of our Fellows continue their work in our further education, workplace, community, and outreach programmes.