2018 Awardee: Shola von Reynolds
"I find it legitimately exciting that Dewar are supporting black Scottish artists and writers, and am elated to be one of them."
Biography
Shola von Reynolds is a Scottish-Nigerian writer. A graduate of the MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, Shola completed the course with support of grants and a Jessica York Writing Scholarship.
After graduating, Shola remained in Glasgow, began writing a debut novel and also gained a coveted place to study on the MSt in Literature at the University of Oxford.
In 2018, Shola was Cove Park’s Scottish Emerging Writer and has had fiction published or upcoming in The Cambridge Literary Review and The Stockholm Review amongst others. Shola writes widely around race, ornament, beauty, and gender, has written articles for AnOther and i-D and is a Scottish Review of Books Emerging Critic.
How the Award Helped
Receiving a Dewar Arts Award enabled Shola to work on LOTE, a debut novel which follows present-day narrator Mathilda’s fixation with the forgotten black Scottish modernist poet and socialite Hermia Druitt.
The award also supported Shola in undertaking an MSt at the University of Oxford. This will facilitate a new stage of research into black and Asian figures in Europe prior to WWII who have been absent from cultural histories. It will also broaden archive and museum-based research skills of the kind precious to any writer.
Shola tells us;
The same week I received my place on the course, diversity statistics showed that black students face particularly significant barriers when it comes to studying at Oxford, with white peers twice as likely to be accepted. Many who are accepted are less likely to take up their place due to financial reasons. Given all this, I find it legitimately exciting that Dewar are supporting black Scottish artists and writers, and am elated to be one of them. Without the award I would simply not be able to accept my place and I would particularly urge any writer of colour in Scotland to apply.
"I find it legitimately exciting that Dewar are supporting black Scottish artists and writers, and am elated to be one of them."