Dame Malorie Blackman Scholarships

City Lit’s Dame Malorie Blackman Scholarships for Unheard Voices provide three annual awards to fund one year’s study within the Creative Writing Department at City Lit.

The awards seek to support and encourage the creative and professional development of ‘unheard voices’.

The final award winners are selected by acclaimed writer, City Lit fellow and Patron of the School of Culture and Communication, Dame Malorie Blackman.

Cropped photo of Malorie Blackman smiling and holding a book

I will forever be grateful to City Lit and Malorie Blackman for selecting me to be one of the recipients of the Malorie Blackman Scholarship Award. The courses that I took during that year taught me a lot, and the award opened up new opportunities for me. It was truly a life-changing year.

The Malorie Blackman scholarship was an enormously valuable experience which helped me to develop my writing and build my confidence.

2026-27 Scholarships

We are delighted to announce the winners of our 2026-27 Dame Malorie Blackman Scholarships!

Andrea Tode Jiménez

Gerline Ndombasi

Surah ya Salaam

Malorie Blackman on this year's selection

‘Every year, selecting the winning entries from the submissions for the City Lit Scholarship scheme gets harder and harder because the quality of the submissions is just so good. It’s an agonising but incredibly enjoyable and fulfilling task to pick those who will receive the scholarships.  

The submissions were challenging, funny, dangerous, thought-provoking, and most of all engaging. I hope that all those who submitted samples of their writing will continue to write, whether or not they receive a scholarship. To those who were not selected, don’t give up! And congratulations to those who receive the scholarships.  May your writing go and grow from strength to strength.’

About this year's talented winners

Andrea Tode Jiménez is a Spanish-Peruvian writer who grew up in Lima. She has previously worked as a columnist, journalist, content writer and editor. Andrea is currently writing her first novel in English and is hoping to develop it at City Lit.

Gerline Ndombasi is a playwright from South London. Her short plays have been performed across the city, including at Theatre503, Theatre Peckham and Arcola Theatre. Gerline plans to use her scholarship to study screenwriting.

Surah ya Salaam is a novelist based in London and a member of Brixton Writers Circle. She has been writing for over 10 years. After taking City Lit’s Advanced Fiction Writing course, she felt inspired to rework her short stories, resulting in one being published in The Hajar Book of Rage collection. She is looking forward to honing her craft further at City Lit.

2027-28 Scholarships

Our 2027-28 Scholarships will open for applications in late 2026. To register your interest and receive a notification when applications are open for 2027-28, please contact writing@citylit.ac.uk.

In the meantime, please find further information about our selection criteria below.

The scholarship award is open to all who have a strong interest in writing and who demonstrate talent and potential in their writing skills. You do not need to be a current or former City Lit student to apply for this award. Applicants must be based in the UK and aged 19 or above at the commencement of our academic year.

The award welcomes applications from ‘Unheard Voices’, and in particular from students who identify as belonging to under-represented groups. This includes (but is not exclusive to) those with disabilities, people from minority backgrounds and communities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and BAME writers.

Our Dame Malorie Blackman Scholarships are focused on providing support and opportunities for writers who do not have an agent and have not published a book-length work.

Queries

If you have any queries, please contact the Writing Department at writing@citylit.ac.uk or 020 4582 0415.

Winning the Malorie Blackman scholarship is up there with some of my biggest achievements to date.

Winning the scholarship has given me the tools to unlock my creativity, with so many fantastic courses that I’m still referring back to, as well as a huge confidence boost to pursue my writing. So thank you City Lit and Malorie Blackman for choosing my poem. I’m so glad I entered!

About Dame Malorie

Dame Malorie Blackman has a long connection with City Lit as a former student attending diverse courses since the late 1980s. Having written over fifty books, Malorie is acknowledged, as one of today’s most imaginative and convincing writers for young readers; works which further translate into captivating stories for fans of all ages on the small screen.

She has been recognised with numerous honours for her work and in 2008 received an OBE for her services to children’s literature. Dame Malorie was the Children’s Laureate between 2013 and 2015 and her autobiography was published on Stormzy’s Merky Books imprint in 2022.