The Royal Society of Literature

08/10/2026

The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) and Hawthornden Foundation announce ten inspirational projects to receive the first round of Literature Matters Grants promoting literature in communities across the UK.

The grant fund, totalling £1 million, will be distributed over five years. The RSL is now announcing ten projects that will share the first £200,000 funding round. The first projects are:

BookTastic Network CIC for BookTastic Programme 2026–27
Claire McCullough for Lit(erature) Without Borders
Huddersfield Literature Festival for Reading Squad
Kitabna – Our Book CIC for Language, Belonging and Women in Action: Reading Rooms
Literature Wales – Llenyddiaeth Cymru for Children’s Laureate Wales: Words that Belong
National Centre for Writing for Norwich Reads
New Writing North for Operating Costs
The Word for Forest Ltd for The Festival of Wild Reading
WORDTheatreUK for Operating Costs/Reading Series
World Book Day Ltd for World Book Day in Communities expansion project

Elif Shafak, president of The Royal Society of Literature, said: We received hundreds of inspiring applications from literary festivals and organisations, and from individuals who have been working tirelessly to bring the love of literature into their local communities. While we are thrilled to fund these ten exceptional projects."

Anyone interested in contributing to the Literature Matters grants and promoting literature in communities across the UK is encouraged to contact the RSL on [email protected]. Applications for the 2027 funding round will open in early 2027.

02/10/2026

Meet the 2026 Fellows🌟

James Campbell was born and raised in Glasgow. He left school at 15 to become a printer's apprentice, and later studied English and American Literature at Edinburgh University. Between 1978-82, he was editor of the New Edinburgh Review, a quarterly magazine of literature and cultural affairs. He moved to London in the early 1980s and worked as an editor and a columnist at the Times Literary London.

In 1993, Campbell's one-man play, The Midnight Hour, about a night in the life of James Baldwin, was staged at the Freedom Theatre, Philadelphia, and revived there two years later. He is a regular reviewer and writer for the Wall Street Journal in New York.

Join us for as we celebrate the incredible work of a new Fellow from our 2026 cohort each week. A selection of books written by the 2026 Fellowship is available to view and purchase via our Bookshop.org page, linked in our bio.

30/09/2026

Meet the 2026 Fellows🌟

Leo Boix is a bilingual Latinx poet from Argentina based in London. His second collection Southernmost: Sonnets (Chatto & Windus, 2025) was shortlisted for the Forward Prizes and named Book of the Year by major UK newspapers.

His debut Ballad of a Happy Immigrant (2021) was a Poetry Book Society Wild Card Choice. He edited and translated Hemisferio Cuir (Fourteen Publishing, 2025), co-directs Un Nuevo Sol, and his work appears widely. He has received multiple prizes, major commissions, and international recognition overall.

Join us as we celebrate the incredible work of a new Fellow from our 2026 cohort each week. A selection of books written by the 2026 Fellowship is available to view and purchase via our Bookshop.org page: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/rsliterature

21/09/2026

Meet the 2026 Fellows🌟

Dinah Birch is a literary academic and critic, with a particular interest in the Victorian period. She regularly contributes review articles to the London Review of Books and Times Literary Supplement. while her work as a broadcaster includes a number of Sky Arts documentaries on literary subjects.

She inaugurated and served as the Director of the University of Liverpool’s annual literary festival, ran an annual short story competition for students and staff of the university, and edited an annual collection of short fiction.

Join us as we celebrate the incredible work of a new Fellow from our 2026 cohort each week. A selection of books written by the 2026 Fellowship is available to view and purchase via our Bookshop.org page, linked in our bio.

15/09/2026

We are delighted to announce this year's RSL Pioneer Prize jury alongside news of new funding from Bukhman Philanthropies.

The RSL Pioneer Prize celebrates pioneering British women writers - across all genres - who have been trailblazers in their field in the past. This year's prize, which will seek to celebrate the work of a pioneer in the genre of poetry, will be judged by a panel of three literature professionals.

Chair Ruth Borthwick, current Chair of English PEN and formerly Chief Executive and Artistic Director of Arvon, is joined by poet, academic and editor Sarah Howe alongside Judith Palmer, Director of the Poetry Society since 2008 and RSL Benson Medallist.

Following the success of the prize in its inaugural year, the RSL Pioneer Prize has now received additional funding from Bukhman Philanthropies, who have generously elected to match Bernardine Evaristo's founding donation of £100,000 to support the legacy of the prize and its recipients.

Each winner will be asked to spotlight one deceased and overlooked woman writer who inspired them when they were starting out, as well as three younger and emerging women writers of today. These writers will be celebrated alongside the winner.

11/09/2026

Meet the 2026 Fellows🌟

Born in London, Joanna Biggs trained at the London Review of Books and has edited for Harper's Magazine in New York and The Yale Review in New Haven, Connecticut. Her criticism has appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, and the New Yorker, among other publications, and she was a finalist for the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing in 2024.

She is the author of two books of non-fiction, one of which was a finalist for the 2023 US National Award for Arts Writing. She was elected member of the US National Book Critics' Circle Board in 2026. She lives in New York City.

Join us for as we celebrate the incredible work of a new Fellow from our 2026 cohort each week. A selection of books written by the 2026 Fellowship is available to view and purchase via our Bookshop.org page: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/rsliterature

A better way to buy books online. Every purchase financially supports local independent bookstores.

04/09/2026

Meet the 2026 Fellows🌟

Jake Arnott’s bestselling debut novel The Long Firm was adapted as a BAFTA award-winning BBC TV drama series.

His second, He Kills Coppers was made into a critically acclaimed ITV1 series, and along with his third book, truecrime, formed a trilogy that was awarded the Crime Writers Association Dagger in the Library.

Subsequent works include Johnny Come Home, The Devil’s Paintbrush, The House of Rumour, The Fatal Tree, Blood Rival and Netherwood.

Join us for as we celebrate the incredible work of a new Fellow from our 2026 cohort each week. A selection of books written by the 2026 Fellowship is available to view and purchase via our Bookshop.org page: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/rsliterature

A better way to buy books online. Every purchase financially supports local independent bookstores.

28/08/2026

Meet the 2026 Fellows🌟

Arifa Akbar is chief theatre critic at The Guardian. A journalist of several decades, she is a former literary editor of The Independent where she also worked as a news reporter and arts correspondent.

She has also worked as arts editor at Tortoise Media, and written for newspapers including the Financial Times, The Observer and The Evening Standard, as well as featuring as a regular guest on BBC Radio Four's Front Row and The World Service's The Arts Hour.

Her first book, Consumed: A Sister’s Story, was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford prize and shortlisted for the Costa Biography Prize, the PEN Ackerley Prize and the Jhalak Prize. Her second book, Wolf Moon: A Woman’s Journey into the Night, was a BBC Radio Four Book of the Week.

Join us for as we celebrate the incredible work of a new Fellow from our 2026 cohort each week. A selection of books written by the 2026 Fellowship is available to view and purchase via our Bookshop.org page: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/rsliterature

A better way to buy books online. Every purchase financially supports local independent bookstores.

15/07/2026

We were delighted to award this year's Benson Medal to Judith Palmer at our annual RSL summer party last month.

Upon receiving this accolade, Palmer said “I’m really overwhelmed. It’s an amazing honour to be here. Organisations like the Poetry Society and the Royal Society of Literature persist because they matter. Literature development does make a difference in making people feel they belong, in throwing open the doors to an ever-growing community of people and saying ‘you are welcome here, as readers and as writers’.”

Palmer has been Director of The Poetry Society since 2008, where she has focused on developing new generations of poets and commissioning new work. A writer, broadcaster and journalist, she has a background in literature development (including at the Southbank Centre and the Women’s Library), publishing, and curating public event programmes. She has research interests in collaborative and nature-based practice, and created the Field Hospital oral history project for Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. She is a Trustee of the Keats Foundation.

Founded in 1916 by scholar, author and RSL Fellow A.C. Benson, the Benson Medal honours service to literature across a whole career.

10/07/2026

Throughout 2025, our four RSL Jerwood Poetry Award winners embarked on their own individual journey of discovery and creation, before coming together to create a final collaborative work ‘The Clearing’, which was performed at this year’s Hay Festival.

In the spirit of the awards, which brought together four poets from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, we invite writers from across the UK to submit their own poetry in response to the work. The RSL welcomes responses to one or all of a series of five prompts related to ‘The Clearing’.

​Each poem submitted will be featured on an online ‘poetry map’, with one winning poem receiving a spotlight in our monthly newsletter, sent to our community of RSL Members, Fellows and subscribers. The contest will remain open until 5pm on Monday 31 August, and the winning poem will be featured in our September mailing.

Submit your entry through the link - please ensure that you have read the terms and conditions prior to entry: https://rsliterature.org/join-in/awards-and-prizes/the-clearing-writing-contest-entry-form/

We are grateful to the Jerwood Foundation and Creative Scotland for their support of the 2024 RSL Jerwood Poetry Awards