The Ravenshill
awards
“There is a bird and a stone in your body. Your job is not to kill the bird with the stone.”
– Victoria Chang
About our annual retreat award scheme
If you are an unpublished writer whose circumstances put retreats beyond your reach – if the idea of a secluded writing week sounds like it is for someone else – we want to hear from you.
The Ravenshill Project was founded in the belief that the gift of time and space in a beautiful setting should be shared. Every year, we reserve four weeks of our calendar for unpublished writers who face barriers to their practice. Awards include up to £150 for travel, and a small stipend for expenses.
We have an annual window for applications, after which writers are selected according to their circumstances and literary merit. We aim to select four writers and host them for a week each, but we are guided by individual needs and availability. Awards include an optional manuscript assessment and an hour-long tutorial with the founder of The Ravenshill Project.
Applications for the 2026 awards are now closed. For occasional new and updates, and to be notified about the 2027 awards, subscribe to our mailing list at the bottom of this page.
The 2026 awards
Thank you to everyone who entered the inaugural Ravenshill Project awards. We received over a hundred applications for four funded places, and the selection process was incredibly difficult.
The quality of submissions was remarkably high, but more than that, the applications showed the extraordinary passion and commitment of so many writers who keep working through barriers including illness, trauma, caring responsibilities, precarious employment, childcare, and the drain of making a living while continuing to create. The awards were designed to support writers in just such circumstances, and reading the entries was genuinely awe-inspiring. We would have loved to award many more retreats.
The four writers invited to spend a week at Ravenshill in 2026 are Elia Isaac, Safa Maryam, Trinity Robinson and Wayne Samuel. Meet them below!
Many congratulations also to the six other shortlisted writers: Freya Gillard, Lee Mackenzie, Adam Mollen, Zahrah Nesbitt-Ahmed, Shambhawi Tripathi and Lucy Wilson.
The 2026 award winners
Elia Isaac
Elia Isaac is an award-winning writer living in south east London, working across poetry, theatre and literary fiction. They won the 2024 Verve Poetry Festival Competition and the 2025 Disabled Poetry Prize, and were runner-up in the 2025 Aurora Poetry Prize and 2026 Tom Grass Prize. Their work has been supported by Audible’s Emerging Playwrights Fund, the London Writers Centre, and The Literary Consultancy. Elia is also a recipient of a Developing Your Creative Practice award from Arts Council England.
Elia is currently writing their first novel. The Ravenshill retreat will offer uninterrupted time to write and build momentum towards a coherent first draft, while spending time in some beautiful surroundings.
Safa Maryam is a poet and doctor from the North. Her work has been published and anthologised by Mslexia, Northern Gravy, Butcher's Dog, and the Poetry Business amongst others. She has been a finalist in the Mslexia Poetry Competition, shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and most recently longlisted in the National Poetry Competition.
Slowly emerging on the other side of burnout, she is grateful for the time and quiet to write and the closeness to nature that the Ravenshill Project Award promises. During her retreat she will be working on a poetry collection which was recently longlisted for a Northern Writers' Award.
Safa Maryam
Trinity Robinson
Trinity Robinson is a writer and filmmaker based in Newcastle. She is passionate about creating work that is character-driven and fosters empathy, particularly exploring working-class experiences. In 2019, she won the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award and has been published in Pure Slush and Between These Shores Literary and Arts Annual. She recently completed her Master’s degree and is currently taking a poetry course at The Poetry School. She teaches Media and Film in further education.
Wayne Samuel
Wayne Samuel is a Nigerian spoken word poet, fiction writer, and creative storyteller whose work explores identity, power, and social critique. Rooted in African oral traditions, his interdisciplinary practice spans live performance, the page, and digital media, blending performance art with elements of theatre and visual culture. A multiple national slam champion, including War of Words and Spoken Wars, his speculative climate fiction has been longlisted for The Island Prize, alongside recognition from the Quramo Writers Prize. He is a member of the Trace Academia and Campus AFD collective KreAfrika and the Art Council-sponsored 2026 Creative Lyric cohort. Wayne aims to create work that is emotionally resonant and politically aware, utilising storytelling to build community and imagine new futures.
Wayne says: “Ravenshill will be the much-needed exhale of a long-held breath. A space to fill my lungs again as I draft a new novel manuscript and prepare for an extensive set at the Stanley Arts Arcadia Festival.”