I’m happy to be a judge for the inaugural #EarlyCareerBursaries for London Writers. Offering three low-income London writers of fiction or narrative nonfiction a transformative bursary of money & support worth £15K. Applications are open now until Tues 1 Nov. I'll be looking for writers who zoom in on the mood of a place, a moment, right down to the cracks in a pavement opening up - something that makes me feel like your story knows more than I do. It’s an honour to be a judge for the Early Career Bursaries. I cite the wisdom of people like @kitdewaal who once said that resilience shouldn’t be one of the most celebrated traits of the working class writer, as it is over-glorified and comes through unnecessary struggle. We need to have more opportunities like the Early Career Bursaries that offer sustained support for low income writers from underrepresented communities. I had my start as a novelist through winning a Spread The Word's London Writers Award for literary fiction, which helped me get a laptop to write with and meet my writing community. Things like this really do help and the act of faith that is applying, paid off! The extract you are sending with your application can be from your proposed bursary project OR, if you have not begun this yet, an extract from a piece of writing that is either narrative non-fiction, novel, part of a short story collection or novella you have written in the past three years. More info via @spreadthewordwriters 📷 @lostintottenham