Introducing the Sarah Quinn BAME Writing scholar for YA and children's fiction
BY Katie Smart
17th Oct 2018
We are pleased to announce that Mayowa Asaju has been awarded the BAME Writing Scholarship for YA and Children's Fiction, generously funded by former CBC student Sarah Quinn. Mayowa has joined the 3-month Writing YA and Children's Fiction course, taught by Catherine Johnson, which started this week.
We've been delighted by the positive response that we've had to the scholarship since it launched. We read lots of impressive entries, which we managed to whittle down to a very strong shortlist of talented new voices, all of whom had huge potential. There was much debate between the CBC team, Sarah and course tutor Catherine Johnson, but Mayowa’s captivating world building and fresh voice and style stood out to us from the start, and we were delighted to offer her the scholarship.
Her novel-in-progress Lairi follows the story of a young girl in a futuristic West African city who goes in search of her estranged mother.
Mayowa says: 'I'm trying to create the novel I would have loved to purchase in a bookstore, or borrow from my local library as a young reader.
Writing can feel like an uphill battle if all you have to bounce your ideas against are the insides of your own head. For this reason, I am very excited about this course being tutored by Catherine Johnson. It feels reassuring to have experienced advisers and a tribe of fellow writers to journey alongside.'
We are thrilled to welcome Mayowa to CBC and can’t wait to see how her novel develops.
At Curtis Brown Creative we are committed to finding talented writers and helping them to get the best out of their novels. We are keen to foster inclusive student groups and to find talented writers - through the provision of scholarships and bursaries - that would otherwise not have the opportunity to undertake one of our selective-entry writing courses.
We recently awarded a free place on our 6-month online novel-writing course, to a talented writer of limited financial means, generously funded by Marian Keyes. Read about the Marian Keyes scholar.
HW Fisher are currently sponsoring a scholarship place for a writer of limited financial means on our upcoming 3-month London-based novel-writing course with Charlotte Mendelson. Applications close this Sunday (21st October). Find out more about the HW Fisher scholarship.
If you are writing a novel for children of young adults our next Writing YA and Children's Fiction course, which starts in April 2019, is currently open for applications.