David Craig Memorial Fund

About the Award

The David Craig Writing Award was set up in David’s memory by his four children, Marian, Peter, Donald and Neil, and his wife Anne Spillard Craig, with the support of Lancaster University.

Applications are welcome for this award from UK and International students. One award of £500 is made each year to a student starting the master’s programme Creative Writing : MA.

The award is made on the basis of you having applied and received an offer to join the programme, and a short statement about how you would use the award. We look for evidence that the award will help you become a successful writer whose work connects experience, place and history.

To be eligible, you need to have had an offer of a place on the Creative Writing master's programme.

The award is for one year only i.e. one payment of £500, and it will be paid directly to the successful applicant after they have started the programme later that year.

To apply for the award please complete the David Craig Application Form. A copy of the form must be uploaded to your application account and emailed to pgadmissions@lancaster.ac.uk by the end of May in the same year that you will start the programme.

The successful candidate will be informed by the end of July.

The award will paid to the successful student after they have registered at Lancaster University.

The award cannot be deferred to the following year of entry.

David crouching down beside his labrador dog.

About David Craig

David Craig was a distinguished author and pioneering creative writing teacher. In 1964 he was one of the first lecturers at Lancaster University, and in 1970 founded an undergraduate creative writing programme. This made Lancaster, along with the University of East Anglia, the first UK university to teach the subject.

David subsequently set up Master’s and PhD creative writing programmes at Lancaster University – the latter being the very first in the UK. All three programmes are now hosted by the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing.

David's own writing encompassed poetry, short stories, novels and plays, literary history and criticism, travel and landscape writing, memoir and oral history, and a rock climber’s guide to the Buttermere and Newlands valleys of the Lake District. His work appeared in both The Spectator and the London Review of Books but also in Marxism Today and the Burton Village Newsletter.