Our Mary Ratcliff Writer’s Room programme will pilot in the Writer's Museum with Vivian Jing Ye and Tasneem Maher

Keira Brown
Communications
Edinburgh City of Literature Trust

27 February 2025

The Mary Ratcliff Writer's Room programme had a marvellous response, with over 80 applications.

Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature and the Society of Authors in Scotland have partnered with the City of Edinburgh Council to pilot a further programme for women writers in Edinburgh – Mary Ratcliff Writer’s Room – which offers a writing space with the inspiration of Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns nearby, alongside a £1,000 fee for the two-month programme and a year free membership with the Society of Authors.

Whether through high-profile campaigns or community-based projects, the Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature’s mission is to make Edinburgh a warm and welcoming city, which values literature and its writers, where everyone can be involved in the joy of reading and writing. With the interest and funding from the Ratcliff family, the Mary Ratcliff Writer’s Room is a project intended to give women writers a space to write in an inspiring collection dedicated to some of Edinburgh’s most renowned writers. Applications closed for this programme in mid-February 2025.

Recent research led by Literature Alliance Scotland informs that writers/literary freelancers average annual full-time income in Scotland in 2022 was £21,140 – just under the Living Wage with 66% making under £20k. The Writer’s Room is a new paid income programme for writers to help build their career and their portfolio, opening other opportunities. And from the response to this call out, it’s clear that these paid writing opportunities are essential for writers, with over 80 applications from creatives with a variety of disciplines whether poetic, academic, non-fiction or fiction, and from every step of a writer’s career.

With a lottery selection for the programme and first instalment of the Mary Ratcliff Writer’s Room programme, writers Vivian Jing Ye and Tasneem Maher have accepted posts on the programme, and are delighted to be trialling the project.

Tasneem Maher

Tasneem Maher is a Palestinian-Jordanian writer and PhD candidate based in Edinburgh, researching Palestinian speculative writing and poetics. A Best of the Net nominee, her work appears in 'Poetry Online', 'VIBE', and 'Porridge' Magazine, amongst others. She is fiction and personal essays editor at 'Sumou Magazine' and she was a programme coordinator for the Unootha Writers' Program in 2021. You can find her @mythosgal on X.

'I am so honoured and delighted to get the space and resources to focus on my writing, and I am so excited to have the opportunity to contribute to Edinburgh's rich literary heritage and culture.'

'I was over the moon when I received the news! Having dedicated time and space to focus on writing is a luxury for any writer, and therefore I’m incredibly grateful for this opportunity. I’m also excited to connect with fellow writers through the wonderful Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature platform. My bond with this city’s literary heritage goes back to when I was twenty, choosing to study literature here. I told my mother that one of the very reasons I picked Edinburgh was because it is the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature, a place where literature is celebrated and deeply cherished by its people, that I longed to experience that enthusiasm firsthand.'

Vivian Jing Ye

Vivian Jing Ye is a bilingual Chinese writer and performer based in Edinburgh, holding Masters in both Creative Writing with distinction and Comparative Literature. She is a selected artist of the Collective Studio at the Newbridge Project. Vivian also studied as a visiting graduate student at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and her work has been shortlisted for the John Byrne Award, featured on BBC Radio, 'From Glasgow to Saturn' and elsewhere. You can find her @jingy0109 on Instagram.

As a charity, we are extremely grateful to the City of Edinburgh Council as well as the Ratcliff family for the funding and space to open the doors to these opportunities for Edinburgh writers, giving them time and place to refine their writing and hone their craft, as well as engage with the Museum’s collections. And indeed thankful to the Society of Authors for their kind offer of the free membership and the work they put in to help us refine this offer. The Mary Ratcliff Writer's Room is a place for women writers, many of whom were eradicated from history, to work and experiment here in the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature, and we look forward to working with Vivian and Tasneem to shape and mould this programme to fit their writing requirements.

If you are a writer and would like to find out more about the Mary Ratcliff Writer's Room programme then check out our webpage.

The offer is administered in all respects by Edinburgh City of Literature Trust, and in partnership with the Society of Authors in Scotland and the City of Edinburgh Council. We gratefully appreciate the financial support of Mary Brown Ratcliff's family.

Mary Brown Ratcliff (née Jamieson) (1928 – 2023) was a resident of Edinburgh who derived great joy from Scottish culture, including Scotland’s literary culture, especially since she discovered that the home where she was bringing up her four children was Robert Louis Stevenson’s home from age 3 to 6. Brought up by her widowed mother along with her three siblings in a Council house in Polmont, she went to Falkirk High School, and did several degrees at Edinburgh University, in the Arts, Maths and Medicine, and became a GP. Her interests were wide, ranging over crafts, music-making, theatre, history, reading, astronomy, botany, and most importantly her family – her husband, four children, their partners and her seven grandchildren. Her children have gifted the Mary Ratcliff Writer’s Room as a legacy from her, in the hope and expectation that through this, another great Edinburgh writer will emerge.