Malorie Blackman Scholarships

City Lit’s 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, Malorie Blackman OBE.

Cropped photo of Malorie Blackman smiling and holding a book

The award

The award, worth up to £1,000 for each successful applicant, is to be spent on creative writing courses at City Lit within one academic year, and can be used against a single course or group of courses appropriate to the award recipient’s creative and learning aims. Award recipients will have the opportunity to speak to a member of the Writing team who will advise and help organise a study plan to best support the development of their writing.

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.

2025-26 Scholarships

As of 2 February, applications for the 25-26 scholarships are now closed. Thank you so much to everyone who applied.

The 25-26 scholarship winners will be announced in May/June 2025. Please check back for further information soon.

2026-27 Scholarships

Applications for next year's scholarships will open in late 2025. Further information will be published on this webpage as it becomes available. To register your interest and receive a notification when the 26-27 Scholarships are open for applications, please contact writing@citylit.ac.uk.

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 Malorie

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. Malorie was the Children’s Laureate between 2013 and 2015 and her autobiography was published on Stormzy’s Merky Books imprint in 2022.