About Us

The Royal Literary Fund (RLF) helps writers in financial need and annually delivers over £5 million in grants, education, community, and workplace programmes. We offer a range of grants to professional writers needing short-term to long-term financial support, whether because they are in debt, facing reduced income, or unable to write due to a change in circumstances, sickness, disability, or age.

Since 1999, our RLF Education programmes have created earning opportunities for over 750 professional writers at over 100 universities and institutions. Most begin as RLF Fellows, teaching students writing skills across the UK, from Aberdeen to Aberystwyth, Belfast to Brighton. Many continue to work through our Writing for Life programmes, which enable writers to share their skills with a wider audience, trained to deliver workshops on writing for self-expression, building writing skills in the workplace, and hosting reading round groups for their local communities.

For over two centuries and through our commitment to supporting literary excellence and representation in contemporary writing, we have been able to support many writers who have gone on to produce some of their most influential and best-known works, including Anna Burns, Margaret Busby, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Joseph Conrad, Elizabeth Jennings, James Joyce, Hanif Kureishi, D.H. Lawrence, Doris Lessing, Mustapha Matura, Edna O’Brien, Mervyn Peake, Monique Roffey, Ali Smith, Bram Stoker, Dylan Thomas, and Antonia White.

All our articles are free to read and written by the RLF team, guest contributors, or RLF Fellows.

Subscribe to our newsletter and visit our website.

Stay up-to-date

You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox.

Join the crew

Be part of a community of people who share your interests.

To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.