2011 Awardee: Cheryl McConachie

I can assure you that I will study extremely hard to make the most of this opportunity and cannot thank you enough for this direct contribution to my future

YEAR OF AWARD: 2011
AGE AT AWARD: 21
ARTFORMS:
 
 
 

Biography

Born and brought up in Elgin, Cheryl went to school at Elgin Academy where she won the first ‘Star Writer’ award. She went on to do a first degree in English Language and Literature and also gain a Dip HE in Fine Art from the University of the Highlands.

Cheryl’s first love is creative writing and she has aspired to be a writer from a young age. She is now undertaking an MLitt in Creative Writing at St Andrew’s University, where she is considered to be a considerable asset to the writing community.

Her strong, contemporary and richly nuanced voice won her admirers from the outset, and she is thought to have considerable potential as a published writer of the future.

How the Award Helped

The Dewar Arts Award will support Cheryl through her master’s year on the creative writing course at St Andrew’s University.

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I can assure you that I will study extremely hard to make the most of this opportunity and cannot thank you enough for this direct contribution to my future

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2009 Awardee: Alan McKendrick

Thanks very much, I’m delighted… and am already looking forward to being able to embark on my project with support from the Award.

YEAR OF AWARD: 2009
AGE AT AWARD: 26
ARTFORMS: , , ,
 
 
 

Biography

Freelance stage writer/director/translator Alan McKendrick, from Glasgow, already has a number of stage successes under his belt. His most recent stage work as writer/director includes The James Dean Death Scene, Finished With Engines and The Bad Drive Well. In 2006 he was winner of the Arches Award for stage directors (for The James Dean Death Scene) and the following year reached the final shortlist for the prestigious Meyer-Whitworth Award for the UK-wide best play by a new writer (for Finished With Engines).

How the Award Helped

The Dewar Arts Award helped Alan to spend a period of time on a creative attachment with the renowned Schaubuehne Theater, Berlin.

Since the Award

Having spent a period of time in Berlin, Alan writes that his “original intention was to…consolidate upon my already-extant skills as a playwright, director and translator. I believe that …this was ultimately achieved on a personal level.” The fruit of this time in Berlin began to appear some months after his return to Scotland, which includes the possibility of his own work being translated into German and him working with a German director on a German-English stage translation.

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Thanks very much, I’m delighted… and am already looking forward to being able to embark on my project with support from the Award.

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2009 Awardee: Elisabeth Ingram

I am delighted to accept this Dewar Award…. My MLitt in Creative Writing, and the short story collection I am working on during it, would absolutely not be possible without this Dewar Award.

YEAR OF AWARD: 2009
AGE AT AWARD: 29
ARTFORMS: ,
WEBSITE:https://iluvwords.blogspot.com
 
 

Biography

Born in Sutton Coldfield, Elisabeth studied English Literature at Harris Manchester College, Oxford’s smallest and most progressive college for mature students, where she won an English Literature scholarship. In 2004, Elisabeth won the McDonough Prize and graduated in 2005. After leaving University Elisabeth focused on writing short stories, with the aim of pursuing a postgraduate creative writing course.

Elisabeth moved to Glasgow and in 2008 joined the competitive MLitt in Creative Writing at Glasgow University. She co-edits the Glasgow University online creative writing journal www.fromglasgowtosaturn.com. In 2009, she founded the Glasgow Student Short Story Prize, with the aim of supporting and promoting other new writers across the city.  The prize is guest judged by A. L. Kennedy, and an anthology of the winners, edited by Elisabeth, will be published in mid August.  To find out more: http://glasgowstoryprize.blogspot.com/.

Elisabeth has a blog at iluvwords.blogspot.com about her year of reading dangerously, “an impossible challenge I set myself, to read a book a day, for a year …”. Ultimately she plans to expand this blog into an online journal for more experimental writing.

While a postgraduate, Elisabeth has had a short story published in the annual showcase of the best in Scottish contemporary writing, New Writing Scotland.  ‘Green Line’ appeared in the 2009 anthology In the Event of Fire.  She will also be published in the upcoming MLitt anthology Hunger, with another short story, ‘Moment of Silence’. Elisabeth is considered to be a talented writer with great potential. As well as writing, Elisabeth designs jewellery and keeps a photographic and design blog of her work, for more information see elisabethingram.blogspot.com.

How the Award Helped

The Dewar Arts Award helped towards the costs of the MLitt.

Since the Award

During a successful year in which she graduated with an MLitt with Distinction, Elisabeth founded the first ‘Glasgow Student Short Story Prize’ which was judged by A L Kennedy. An anthology of the winning entries was published in paperback and online.  She continued to co-edit the online Glasgow University creative writing journal ‘From Glasgow to Saturn’. In 2010 Elisabeth was runner-up in the prestigious Curtis Brown Prize.  She continues to write and be published.

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I am delighted to accept this Dewar Award…. My MLitt in Creative Writing, and the short story collection I am working on during it, would absolutely not be possible without this Dewar Award.

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2008 Awardee: Lynsey Murdoch

I am absolutely delighted to formally accept the award .. for the completion of my film ‘Eat Me’.

YEAR OF AWARD: 2008
AGE AT AWARD: 27
ARTFORMS: , , ,
 
 
 

Biography

Hailing from Cambuslang, Lynsey has been given an Award to concentrate on writing and producing her film ‘Eat Me’, about a young Scottish woman suffering from an eating disorder. As a past sufferer of bulimia, Lynsey knows a lot about the fear and obsession that can inhabit someone with an eating disorder.

Lynsey has proven writing and acting talent and was described as a ‘… new star of Scottish Theatre in the making’ for her performance in ‘Mad Cow’ at the Arches Theatre in Glasgow. In 2006 she was selected by the Playwright’s Studio Scotland for their mentoring scheme. During that time, Lynsey impressed by her commitment and the way in which she found her own voice and unique way of telling her story. Lynsey’s forte is in portraying issues which are affecting young people in society today, with an acute sense of observation and humour.

How the Award Helped

The Dewar Arts Award is supporting Lynsey as she develops as a writer and performer

Since the Award

Lynsey describes the experience of writing and acting in her short film ‘Eat Me’ as “an absolute turning point” in her career.  The film was shot in May 2009 and completed later that year. It will be submitted to film festivals in the UK and worldwide.

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I am absolutely delighted to formally accept the award .. for the completion of my film ‘Eat Me’.

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2007 Awardee: Jen Hadfield

I am so very grateful for my Dewar Award. The faith and the funding it represented renewed my faith in my own creative purpose.

YEAR OF AWARD: 2007
AGE AT AWARD: 29
ARTFORMS: ,
WEBSITE:https://www.rogueseeds.blogspot.co.uk
EMAIL:jenhadfield@btinternet.com
 

Biography

Jen Hadfield has worked as a professional poet since 2002 when she received a writer’s bursary from the Scottish Arts Council. Her first collection, Almanacs, was published when she was 27 and won first prize in the Society of Authors’ Eric Gregory Awards in 2003.

Her Gregory Award funded an extended reading tour in Canada and the US, during which time she produced her second collection of poetry Nigh-No-Place which is due to be published in early 2008.

She is considered to be one of the brightest and most talented poets of her generation working in Britain. Her work displays verve and panache and her descriptions of landscape and natural forces is quite unique.

A permanent resident of Shetland since 2006, Jen is taking her work in a new direction to bring literature and visual arts together. In 2006 she exhibited at the Peedie Gallery in Orkney, a prototype of the folk-art she intends to develop.

How the Award Helped

The Dewar Arts Award will fund Jen as she realises Nigh-No-Place, a collection of contemporary miniature landscapes of Shetland onto tin and found objects, with text.

Since the Award

Congratulations to Jen for winning the T S Eliot Prize 2008 for Nigh-No-Place. Previous winners of this top poetry prize include Sean O’Brian, Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes.  Chair of the judges, Andrew Motion, said, “We are absolutely delighted that Jen Hadfield has won this year’s T S Eliot Prize.  Nigh-No-Place shows that she is a remarkably original poet near the beginning of what is obviously going to be a distinguished career.”

Jen writes that, “The Dewar Award represented a green light to put my creative work first for most of a year… I consider the Dewar Award to have marked a crucial stage in my developing confidence as an artist in multiple disciplines.”

Winner of the Edwin Morgan Poetry Prize 2012. Listen to Jen reading her winning poem The Kids here.

Winner of the Highland Book Prize in 2021 for The Stone Age.

Recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize in 2024.

Jen Hadfield – A Writing Life from Scottish Poetry Library on Vimeo.

Jen Hadfield reads in Grasmere

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I am so very grateful for my Dewar Award. The faith and the funding it represented renewed my faith in my own creative purpose.

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2007 Awardee: Jenni Fagan

I cannot wait to begin my BA in Norwich and I am really excited about the work I plan to do there.

YEAR OF AWARD: 2007
AGE AT AWARD: 29
ARTFORMS: , , ,
 
 
 

Biography

Jenni has been writing creatively since she was in primary school where she won competitions for short stories and poems. Since then, her writing achievements are impressive and to date include winning a national competition in 2004 to represent Scotland at the European Young Playwrights Forum in Athens and in 2006 reaching the final six in a national competition organised by the Playwrights Studio Scotland which entitles her to be mentored by the Studio.

Jenni not only shows incredible talent and promise as a writer, she has a unique voice and poetic originality.

Jenni has built up a substantial body of work already; one book of poetry, an autobiographical novel, three plays, two film scripts, many short stories and countless outlines for future work.

She has been published in Brand Literary Magazine, Flux, Dope USA, Underground Poetix Instanbul, Tate Modern, Graffiti Kalkota India, Dwang Anthology, Beat Anthology and Unthology amongst others.

How the Award Helped

The Dewar Arts Award will support Jenni through a degree in creative writing at Norwich School of Art & Design, and later at Greenwich University.

Since the Award

In 2010 Jenni graduated with a first-class degree. In the same year her novel The Panopticon was completed and her art installation The Scold’s Bridle, a collaboration wth the words of women in prison, was exhibited at Greenwich Gallery.

Her first collection of poetry Urchin Belle, published by Blackheath Books, was a sell-out and her second collection The Dead Queen of Bohemia is published in 2010.

While an undergraduate, Jenni facilitated a writers’ group at Norfolk Blind Association. She begins her first Writer’s Residency at Lewisham Hospital in late 2010. Jenni has accepted a place on the MA course at Royal Holloway, taught by Andrew Motion, starting in the autumn of 2010.

In 2013, Jenni’s novel The Panopticon was nominated for a for the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. Click here for further details.

Jenni took part in our Tenth Anniversary Celebrations, where she led a Meet the Artist session with fellow Awardee Jonathan Boyd.

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I cannot wait to begin my BA in Norwich and I am really excited about the work I plan to do there.

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2007 Awardee: Laura Helyer

I was thrilled to hear that I have been offered an award.

YEAR OF AWARD: 2007
AGE AT AWARD: 25
ARTFORMS: , ,
 
 
 

Biography

Suffolk-born Laura Helyer’s long-term ambition is to become a published writer of poetry and literary fiction. She recently completed an M.Litt in Creative Writing (poetry) with distinction from St Andrews and is now working towards a PhD.

Laura moved to Dumfries in Galloway in 2005. Whilst there, her poem sequence ‘Camera Obscura’ was the joint winner of the Kirkpatrick Dobie prize. Following this success, Laura was invited to participate in a poetry scheme which involved being mentored to produce a collection of poems for a public reading and being paired with an established poet to perform her poems. Laura read with the well-known poet Adrian Mitchell, who was greatly impressed with her work.

Other achievements include in 2006 being runner-up in the prestigious Cardiff International Poetry Competition with her poem ‘The Heron’ and in 2005 having her short story ‘Green Angel’ commended in The Eildon Tree magazine writing competition and subsequently published in their anthology. More recently in 2007, Laura won first place in the Kirkpatrick Dobie Poetry Prize and second place in the Muriel Carmichael Prize (for prose essay).

Laura is considered to have the potential to become an important voice in British poetry as her work becomes more widely published. Already she has shown to have unusual talent combined with intelligence and an ability to write with a language of precision and rare sensitivity.

How the Award Helped

The Dewar Arts Award is providing financial support while Laura works on a series of poems and on a novel.

Since the Award

Laura writes, “[A] Dewar Award has enabled creative time, space and opportunities for which I have been extremely grateful.” Laura has sent her first collection of poetry, including a sequence of poems about the artists Joan Eardley, to a publisher. She lives in Dumfries & Galloway where she is an active member of the writing community.

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I was thrilled to hear that I have been offered an award.

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2005 Awardee: Jillian Smith (Now Jillian Mannion)

My year at VFS has given me the skills and confidence to return to Scotland and become a screenwriter who can hopefully have a profound affect on the entertainment industry.

YEAR OF AWARD: 2005
AGE AT AWARD: 25
ARTFORMS: , ,
 
 
 

Biography

Jillian Smith is the first writer to win a Dewar Arts Award. She has been writing since a very young age.

Described as a precocious talent by her university tutors, Jillian demonstrated as an undergraduate that she was equally fluent in writing poetry, academic essays or film scripts.

Jillian worked regularly with the Writer in Residence at Dundee University and joined Creative Writing Groups to hone her writing skills. Like all budding writers she has been sending her work away since a teenager.

In 2005 Jillian gained a first in English at Dundee University and is now fulfilling her life’s ambition of studying writing for film and TV at the prestigious Vancouver Film School.

Towards the end of her course, an agent who specialises in selling feature film scripts to major Hollywood production companies visited the Film School to have students pitch their ideas to him. Jillian wrote to say that her idea for a feature film had caught his eye.

Katherine Montagu, a tutor on the Vancouver Film School writing course wrote to the trustees after Jillian’s graduation, “You should be very proud that you had the foresight to invest in the education of a brilliant young writer like Jillian Smith.”

How the Award Helped

Jillian received a Dewar Arts Award to support her studies at the Vancouver Film School.

Since the Award

“Love Bites”, a feature film romantic comedy that Jillian co-wrote, went into production in early 2009, directed by Katrin Bowen and produced by Cherry-Lee Fast of Fast Productions.

2013 – Screenplay for Random Acts of Romance Nominated for a Leo Award.

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My year at VFS has given me the skills and confidence to return to Scotland and become a screenwriter who can hopefully have a profound affect on the entertainment industry.

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