In response, the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), the Royal Literary Fund (RLF), the T S Eliot Foundation in partnership with English PEN, and Amazon UK generously contributed financial resources to create the Authors’ Emergency Fund, to help support authors impacted financially by the growing health crisis.

Applications are open to all professional authors who are resident in the UK or British subjects – including all types of writers, illustrators, literary translators, scriptwriters, poets, journalists and others – for whom author-related activities make up a substantial amount of their annual income.

Grants are likely to be up to £2,000 and designed to meet urgent need with the possibility of review as the situation continues.

Please note that they are unable to offer grants for:

• Publication costs/those who are in difficulty because they have contributed towards publication costs
• Student tuition fees
• A specific writing project (see the Authors’ Foundation)