The David T. K. Wong Fellowship is a unique annual creative writing award at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. It has been designed to assist in deepening — through literature — inter-cultural understanding between Asia and the West.
Hence it is being awarded to a person of any nationality, race, religion or age to produce either a novel or a collection of short stories in the English language, but necessarily set in the Far East.
The award is currently set at £26,000.
The Fellowship has been funded through a capital endowment held in trust, to ensure that the award can continue in perpetuity. The first Fellow was selected in 1998 and subsequent Fellows have reflected considerable diversity in backgrounds and in stages of literary development. But the key to the award has always been the quality and promise in an applicant’s writing.
Fellows are chosen by a distinguished international panel of judges. The current chairman of the panel is Professor Jon Cook. Previous chairs have included Sir Andrew Motion, the former Poet Laureate, and the late Professor Lorna Sage.
The application process for the Fellowship begins in November of each year and ends in February of the following year. It involves the submission of a proposal for a project together with a sample of what is intended to be written. The selection by the panel is usually completed by April.
Please go to the UEA website for further details.
The founder and some Fellows of the David T. K. Wong Fellowship taken at the Savile Club in London in June of 2008, after the Fellows had participated in the New Writing World Symposium at the University of East Anglia.