Breakthrough scholarship for LGBTQIA+ horror writers

Closing date for applications: Monday 23rd March 2026

Course dates: 13th April to 12th June 2026

Get your horror novel off the ground with a fully funded course and mentorship from an award-winning author.

Study with Curtis Brown Creative – the only writing school from a major literary and talent agency. We've been helping writers tell their stories since 2011. We are delighted to announce that this Breakthrough Scholarship will provide the full course fee for a talented LGBTQIA+ writer to study on our new nine-week Writing Horror Fiction course with Zoom teaching and feedback from award-winning author Andrew Michael Hurley.

This scholarship is open to anyone over the age of 18, who identifies as LGBTQIA+ and fulfils our low-income eligibility criteria. Your submission does not necessarily have to be about LGBTQIA+ experiences, although we are particularly interested in stories with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer characters or themes.

Financial criteria

• Unmarried and not co-habiting with a partner, with an annual (gross, pre-tax) income of less than £30,000 and personal savings of less than £10,000.
• Married or co-habiting with a partner, with a total annual (gross pre-tax) household income of less than £45,000 and personal savings (jointly or individually) of less than £10,000.

If you don’t quite fit our financial criteria but are nonetheless financially challenged, then do apply, explaining your circumstances in the form.

Terms & conditions

• Applicants to the Breakthrough Scholarship for LGBTQIA+ Horror Writers must fulfil our eligibility criteria. Our form asks you to make statements about your gender identity and sexuality, your financial income and the reason you deserve this fully funded opportunity.
• With respect to the earnings thresholds set out in our eligibility section: for salaried applicants, your current salary at date of application must be under the threshold. For self-employed applicants, your gross pre-tax profits (average figure for the last two financial years) must be under the threshold. State benefits such as jobseeker’s allowance should be counted as income.
• Applicants may be asked to provide proof of their financial circumstances in support of their application.
• Applicants must not be currently represented by a literary agent.
• Applicants must not have previously published a full-length book with a traditional, non-academic publisher.

How to apply

We ask applicants to send us the first 3,000 words of the novel they’d like to work on during the course with a one-page synopsis, and to fill out our application form.

Curtis Brown Creative offers scholarship places based on proven writing ability. The scholarship will be awarded to the applicant with submission material that shows the greatest potential and promise in our view. The decision will be made by the Curtis Brown Creative team.

Our application process is simple, and we encourage all writers meeting the eligibility criteria to apply.

Don’t worry if you have little or nothing to say in response to questions about e.g. writing experience or employment. Just fill out the form, upload your work and we’ll be in touch soon.

The deadline for applications is Monday 23 March, and we will respond to applicants by Friday 27 March 2026.

We welcome and encourage applications from candidates who are under-represented in the creative industries.

Please make sure that you state in your application that you found this role via Creative Access.