Thursday, June 25, 2009

Arthurian Scholarship

I received this e-mail today:
Please forward this message to any students interested in Arthurian literature and a scholarship opportunity. Mark Adderley has informed us that the scholarship below, which has been on our website for a while, has been withdrawn by his publisher 'owing to lack of interest'. He advises that we should lobby the publisher to help him understand that this was a mistake.If you are interested in writing the essay or have someone in mind who might be, please reply to this message no later than 4 July so that I can lobby on your behalf.
Regards
Leonie Viljoen


Here are the scholarship details:

Any student currently enrolled in college and studying for a liberal arts degree, or in high school and planning to study for a liberal arts degree,is eligible. Deadline for submissions: July 31, 2009.

Westbank Publishing announces the new Matter of Britain Scholarship. The award of $500-$2500 will be made in August for an essay of 1500-2000 words in length, comparing the way Merlin is presented in Mark Adderley's new novel The Hawk and the Wolf with the presentation of the same character inany of the following books:
  • Barron, T. A., The Lost Years of Merlin (Philomel, 1996)
  • Stewart, Mary, The Crystal Cave (Eos, 1971)
  • White, T. H., The Sword in the Stone (G. P. Putnam's, 1938)
  • Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. Michael A. Faletra (Broadview, 2008)
  • Geoffrey of Monmouth, The Life of Merlin (in Faletra's translation of the History)
  • The Myrddin poems (The Romance of Merlin, ed. Peter Goodrich, Routledge, 1991)

I suspect the "lack of interest" is better described as a "lack of advertising," since I've already got a handful of students who want to apply for this. The e-mail provided the url http://www.markadderley.net/scholarship/, but the page was already gone when I checked it.

2 comments:

  1. It's not looking great for this scholarship. I got an e-mail from Mark Adderley in which he said the scholarship was withdrawn.

    Methinks our only hope to keep the scholarship alive is to appeal to the publisher: westbankpublishing@gmail.com

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  2. This came across AnSaxNet today:

    Not only will the scholarship not be reinstated, but: "In truth it does not appear that Westbank Publishing will make it through this year and we will have to shut down. Almost all of our future projects have been put on hold pending the next quarter of sales and so far that looks very poor."

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