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Royal Literary Fund Fellowships offer professional writers the opportunity to work for two days a week in a university helping students to develop their writing skills.

Duration of the Fellowship
Fellowships run during the academic year (generally from around mid-September to mid-May).

Timetable during Term
The Fellow commits to be available for contact with students on two regular days a week for 30 weeks. An additional half-day each week may be required of the Fellow as time spent in preparation/ liaison with staff and RLF/ review, etc. (though this time is spent off campus).

Payment
The writer enters into a Consultancy Agreement with the RLF. The writer is responsible for tax and National Insurance on the consultancy fee which will be £16,000 for the academic year 2024/25.

Location
The RLF runs the scheme in partnership with higher education institutions (HEIs) throughout the UK:

Guiding Principles

  1. the aim of the RLF Fellowship is to foster good writing practice among students through one-to-one coaching;
  2. while working in a collaborative arrangement alongside staff at the HEI, the Fellow remains self-employed, working outside departmental lines of reporting;
  3. the work of the Fellow is designed to provide ‘added value’ to whatever systems of student support exist at the HEI; the promotion and operation of the Fellowship must reflect its independence from these other systems;
  4. the details of the Fellow’s work with each student are confidential and will not be shared with staff at the HEI without the express permission of the student; however, at the year end, a statistical overview of the students seen by the Fellow, along with anonymous case studies, will be provided to the host department;
  5. the Fellow will determine their own approach to teaching although they shall always have due regard to the RLF’s best practice guidelines and to the terms of the RLF letter of appointment;
  6. while on site, the Fellow should show due regard for the HEI’s equal opportunities/ diversity policies, its safeguarding procedures and its health & safety regulations;
  7. the Fellow will work with students on a one-to-one basis;
  8. the main focus of the Fellow’s work will be on the development of student writing skills/ academic literacy (rather than on creative self-expression as with the conventional writer’s residency);
  9. the Fellowship service may be promoted to students at all levels of ability (above ‘remedial’) and across the disciplines;
  10. the Fellow is not required to undertake tasks beyond the remit of the Fellowship, for example, dyslexia support, and basic skills or EFL/EAP tuition – nor, at any time, to perform duties normally carried out by staff, such as, course design or delivery, marking, invigilating;
  11. the Fellow is free to negotiate paid work from the HEI (or any other party) outside the days allocated to Fellowship work;
  12. the Fellow retains all intellectual property rights in materials that they may write for use by students/staff at the HEI, except that the RLF shall have free and unrestricted (non-commercial) use of these materials (for its own purposes) in perpetuity.

Further information:
About the RLF Fellowship scheme

Applying to the scheme

Timeline

Recruitment is open for posts beginning in autumn 2025.
If you would like to apply, please email the Fellowship Office with your name and full postal address and you will be sent an application pack:

fellowships@rlf.org.uk

Prospective applicants are advised to study carefully the information on this site about eligibility and the nature of the role before deciding whether to apply.

Eligibility

You should be a writer with at least two (sole-authored) books published, or professionally produced theatre works performed, or radio/TV scripts broadcast, prior to application. Books stemming from a parallel career as an academic or practitioner are not eligible, neither are self-published/vanity-published titles. Candidates must be resident in the UK or Ireland at the time of application and have the unconditional right to work in the UK.

The selection process is a competitive one. Once you apply, your literary merit and suitability for the scheme will be measured against those of the other candidates in that round.

The RLF is a charity which has historically supported writers in financial difficulty; we particularly welcome and encourage applications from those facing financial challenges.

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