It’s a big day here at the RSL, with the opening of this year’s Sky Arts RSL Writers Awards, RSL Giles St Aubyn Awards for Non-Fiction, RSL Literature Matters Awards and RSL Open.

Sky Arts RSL Writers Awards

Launched in 2021 in partnership with Sky Arts, the Sky Arts RSL Writers Awards celebrate and nurture British writers of colour at the beginnings of their careers. Five winners will receive ten mentoring sessions over the course of 12 months with an RSL Fellow writing in their form, as well as two sessions with Awards Ambassador Bernardine Evaristo.

We’re delighted to welcome Inua Ellams, Jay Bernard, Nadifa Mohamed, Vinay Patel and Nikesh Shukla as mentors for the second year of the Awards.

Submissions for the 2022 Sky Arts RSL Writers Awards are open until 31 July 2022. Full eligibility criteria and guidelines are available here.

RSL Giles St Aubyn Awards for Non-Fiction

In 2017, the RSL established the RSL Giles St Aubyn Awards for first-time writers of non-fiction through a generous bequest from author and RSL Fellow Giles St Aubyn. Giles St Aubyn, who died in 2015 aged 89, wrote 14 non-fiction books and taught history for nearly 40 years at Eton College. A nephew of Vita Sackville-West, he counted John Betjeman, John le Carré and The Queen Mother among his friends.

This year’s judges are Homi K. Bhahba, Fiona Boyle and Violet Moller.

Submissions for the 2022 RSL Giles St Aubyn Awards for Non-Fiction are open until 14 September 2022. Full eligibility criteria and guidelines are available here.

RSL Literature Matters Awards

The RSL’s Literature Matters Awards aim to reward and enable literary excellence and innovation. Each year, after an open call for proposals, the Awards are given to individual writers or other literary creators, recognising their past achievements and providing them with financial support to undertake a proposed new piece of writing or literary project.

Launched as part of the RSL’s Literature Matters programme, priority will be given to proposals which (a) will help connect with audiences or topics outside the usual reach of literature, and/or (b) will help generate public discussion about why literature matters.

This year’s judges are Melanie Abrahams, Sophie Collins and Ian Duhig.

Submissions for the RSL’s 2022 Literature Matters Awards are open until 24 August 2022. Full eligibility criteria and guidelines are available here.

RSL Open

Celebrating the excellence of writers from communities that have been under-represented in UK literary culture.

The RSL believes that literature is at its best when it includes voices from the greatest breadth of backgrounds and experiences, in all literary forms, from across the UK. RSL Open was launched in 2020 to celebrate the great diversity of outstanding writers and writing in Britain by electing 60 Fellows over the following two years from communities under-represented in UK literature.

We are asking you – RSL Fellows, as well as publishers, agents and arts administrators, passionate readers, and peers – to recommend excellent writers from communities under-represented in UK literary culture for nomination to Fellowship.

Recommendations of writers will be considered by a panel of RSL Fellows (pictured above), chaired by Damian Barr and including Monica Ali, Kerry Hudson, Nick Laird, Sabrina Mahfouz, Charlotte Mendelson, Daljit Nagra, Irenosen Okojie and Chibundu Onuzo.

The selected cohort of writers each year will be elected by the RSL Council as FRSL. They will sign the historic Roll Book alongside 15 Fellows elected by the RSL’s direct Fellowship nomination process.

We will be accepting recommendations for the second year of RSL Open until 17 July 2022. Full eligibility criteria and guidelines are available here.

Illustration courtesy of Anna Trench.