March Newsletter from The Royal Society of Literature

March news  The above picture is from the home page of our new website (rsliterature.org), which went live last month. Built by website developers Bookswarm, this is a fully responsive site (which can be viewed on desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone) with some new features including Fellow of the Month and News.  Don't forget that you have until this coming Thursday 5 March to apply for a place on our latest RSL/ Booker Prize Foundation Masterclass with Kamila Shamsie on 'Writing the Unfamiliar' (11 April, Somerset House). Tickets are distributed by ballot. Please email Sophia Morris-Jones  using 'Kamila Shamsie Masterclass' as the subject line, to apply. We are accepting applications for our latest round of RSL Brookleaze Grants. The purpose of these grants is to buy time for novelists, short-story writers, poets or playwrights with pieces of work in hand. Please visit our website for full details of eligibility and how to apply. Deadline for applications for this round is Friday 15 May 2015.

V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize 2015 We are delighted to announce that the seventeenth annual V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize for unpublished short stories is now open to entries. The author of the winning entry will be awarded a prize of £1,000 and their story published in Prospect online and in the RSL Review. There will be an opportunity to appear at an RSL event with established short story writers in autumn 2015. The closing date is 22 June 2015.  This year’s judges are Philip Hensher, Adam Mars-Jones and Rose Tremain. ENTER ONLINE  Arts Council England must treat literature more fairly The recent Leader article in the Spring RSL Review called Arts Council England to account over their funding of literature as an art form. Read the full article and the response from Antonia Byatt, Director of Literature at Arts Council England.   Tales of two cities 18 March, 7pm, Senate House Award-winning poets Mark Doty, the first American poet to win the T.S. Eliot Award, and Ruth Padel, a former winner of the National Poetry Competition and shortlisted for the 2014 T.S. Eliot Award, read from their work. Introduced by Fiona Sampson, Director, Roehampton Poetry Centre, our co-hosts for this event. £8 / £5 concessions / FREE for RSL Members. Book now  More