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A former Curtis Brown Creative student has launched a scholarship to pay for one applicant to take the next Curtis Brown Creative six-month novel-writing course.
Sarah Quinn, who completed the six-month novel writing course in March, is offering to cover the course fees of one student of "limited financial means".
In a video announcing the scholarship, Quinn said that she was inspired to fund it after being helped herself in a similar way 20 years ago. She said: "Funding the scholarship with Curtis Brown was very important to me. A very long time ago someone put their hand in their pocket to help me and I think actually if they hadn’t, I wouldn’t be where I am now and I wanted to pay that forward. That happened 20 years ago so I thought probably that £50 has accumulated a little bit over 20 years and I like the idea of helping somebody else in pursuing their dream and trying to get to where they want to be as well."
She added: "I would love to find somebody who really just for circumstances hasn’t had that opportunity to really develop their thinking and their writing. Somebody who’s a little bit different, a little bit offbeat, it would be really interesting to find somebody and I would love to know that I’ve helped somebody spend six months focusing just purely on their writing."
Describing the perfect applicant, Quinn said: "For me it’s about somebody who is hungry for it, somebody who has a unique and original idea – it doesn’t matter how well formed it is – that has a voice and a tone. I think the quirkiness is really interesting because me personally, I’m writing something that doesn’t quite fit in a box yet so I understand how difficult that can be. And I think honestly I want to read it and know more. I think that’s the thing for me, the emotional connection – it might not be my style, it might not be my sort of topic but I want to know more."
The six-month novel-writing course with Louise Wener will run from 22nd September this year to 16th March 2017. More information on how to apply can be found here.
Quinn is currently working on a novel Where Skateboards Go To Die.