Writers' Card Lottery – paid writing weeks
The first Writers’ Card Lottery Fund will open from Tue 27 Jan – Tue 19 Feb 2025
Every year, the Royal Court supports a handful of early-career playwrights with a light-touch paid writing week. They’re usually writers we’ve found through submissions or invitations, who we think show promise. It’s not a commission and we don’t ask for any rights: it just buys talented writers a week off day-jobs and side-hustles, to develop their craft or finish a draft. With the Writers’ Card, we’re extending this support further.
Twice a year, we’ll run a free-to-apply lottery for any Writers’ Card Member to enter – anyone for whom a small payment would help buy a bit of time and space to unlock their next steps. These individuals, selected at random, will be offered at the same rate we offer any writer – currently £600 for a week paid in advance as a one-off fee – with no strings attached and no evaluation or reporting requirements. (Though if you do finish that draft, we’d love you to share it via our Open Submissions portal).
A minimum 50% of lottery awards will be ring-fenced for writers from backgrounds currently under-represented in our sector, including Black & Global Majority, Working Class, and D/deaf and disabled playwrights. Applications will be light-touch, with quick decisions and no hidden criteria, value judgments or requests for personal information we don’t need.
Apply
The first Writers’ Card Lottery Fund will open from Tue 27 Jan – Tue 19 Feb 2025. It is completely free to enter for any signed-up Royal Court Writers’ Card Member. For this round, we’ll be offering payments of £600 each to 10 lottery winners. To apply, we’ll be asking a short set of questions, including personal details and a few lines about your work.
To apply, click here.
If you would like view the guidance and questions offline before submitting, you can download a Word document version here.
If you have any other access needs to support your submission, please contact us on writerscard@royalcourttheatre.com.
