13 March 2007

£30000 for Wooden Baby

Dundee University Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow, Jonathon Falla, has been awarded the Scottish Art Council’s top prize for future work for his depiction of life in 16th century Europe and the impact of war and disease on the lives of children.

Provisionally titled "Wooden Baby", Mr Falla’s novel will be written from the perspective of the French essayist Michel de Montaigne, depicting the influence and impression the issues of the day played on the essayist’s family.

The Creative Scotland Award of £30,000 will help to fund Mr Falla’s research and travels to enable him to create the work. The writer was one of 10 people named in the Creative Scotland Awards last week.

The prize is open to established artists of any medium. This year’s winners included writers, film-makers, musicians and playwrights. The aim is to help established artists develop projects they may not otherwise have been able to pursue.

Mr Falla said, "Writing a complex historical novel is a very time-consuming and often expensive process, requiring travel and probably two years' work. It is not something one can readily do without support."

Jonathon Falla is a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Dundee and the author of acclaimed works including Blue Poppies and Poor Mercy and the award-winning feature film The Hummingbird Tree.

Mr Falla works with the University’s Academic Skills Team in the Learning Centre on their Just Write programme, helping postgraduate and undergraduate students develop their academic writing skills.

Working with students has benefits both ways. I try to teach the virtues of clear, simple prose; this reminds me to practice what I preach," Mr Falla said.

NOTES TO EDITORS

Jonathon Falla
Jonathon Falla was born in Jamaica and read English and Art History at Cambridge. He went to Java to edit magazines for an Indonesian publisher, then worked for Oxfam in Uganda. This led him to qualify as a nurse; he was nursing children until 2006. He has trained paramedics for insurgents in Burma, was medical coordinator for Save the Children in Darfur, and their Field Director in Nepal.

He has held a Fulbright Senior Fellowship in screenwriting and has taught creative writing for the Arvon Foundation.

Academic Skills Team
The Academic Skills teaching team is based in the University’s Learning Centre. They provide several Academic Support Programmes that are designed to help students to develop the higher level academic learning skills, especially writing, that they will need for university study.

Creative Scotland Awards
The Creative Scotland Awards are presented annually to up to 10 established artists with a record of major achievement in their field. The Awards are funded through the National Lottery and are intended to provide artists with an opportunity to develop new collaborations, to develop their skills and to take their career in a new direction and to a higher level.

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