Ignite Fellows 2024

Recognising the achievements of talented professional authors, the Ignite Fellowship offers practical and financial support for exploring new avenues or making new breakthroughs.

Meet our 2024 Fellows, Alycia Pirmohamed, Kris Haddow and our Gaelic Fellow Calum L MacLeòid below, or find out more about our previous Ignite Fellows.

Alycia Pirmohamed

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet based in Scotland. She is the author of Another Way to Split Water, published by Polygon (UK) and YesYes Books (US), the pamphlets Hinge (ignitionpress) and Faces that Fled the Wind (BOAAT Press), and the collaborative essay Second Memory (Guillemot Press and Baseline Press), which was co-authored with Pratyusha.

She is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics Program, and she currently teaches on the MSt. Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge. Alycia has held post-doctoral positions at IASH, University Edinburgh and at the University of Liverpool, and she received an MFA from the University of Oregon and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. Her awards include the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award.

Alycia's project:

Alycia will be working on a creative nonfiction project.

Alycia says:

'It’s such a wonderful honour to be awarded an Ignite Fellowship this year as I work on a new project in creative nonfiction. I know how lucky I am to have this time and these resources to develop my writing and I’m so grateful to Scottish Book Trust for this opportunity.'

Kris Haddow

Kris Haddow is a writer from Dumfries and Galloway who lives in Glasgow. He writes plays, poems, and prose in Scots, with recent work appearing in Gutter Magazine and New Writing Scotland. His poem On Times Austere was engraved in glass and permanently installed at Dumfries’s Globe Inn after winning Windows for Burns Night in 2012.

Kris also won ‘see me’ Scotland’s national short story award in 2011. A graduate of University of Glasgow’s MLitt Creative Writing programme, he returned as a DFA candidate to research Scots dialect in publishing while developing new work. Kris is currently writing his first novel, When the Curlew Cries No More, which won the Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival’s Pitch Perfect event in 2021.

Kris' project:

Kris will be working on a novel set in rural South West Scotland, which entwines local language and landscape to bring the Scots dialect, people, and place to life.

Kris says:

'I feel truly honoured to have been awarded an Ignite Fellowship, and can only describe myself as 'chuffed tae the gunnies' when I received the call from Scottish Book Trust. Their support will be invaluable as I endeavour to complete and edit my novel.'

Calum L MacLeòid

'S e sgrìobhadair agus fear-naidheachd a th' ann an Calum L. MacLeòid. Choisinn an dàrna nobhail aige "Fon Choill" Duais Litreachais 2021 airson an leabhair ficsein as fheàrr. Tha e a' fuireachd ann an Inbhir Pheofharain.

Calum L. MacLeòid is a a writer and journalist. His second novel "Fon Choill" won the Gaelic Literature Award 2021 for best fiction. He lives in Dingwall.

Calum's project:

Tha mi air a bhith sgrìobhadh sgeulachdan ghoirid fad iomadh bhliadhna a-nis ach cha d' fhuair mi a-riamh cothrom bhith toirt prìomhachas dhaibh agus cruinneachadh dhiubh a chur ri chèile. Bheir an sgeama seo dhomh an cothrom a-nis. 

I have been writing short stories for years now but I have never had the chance to make them a priority or to pull them together into a collection. This scheme will give me the chance to do that finally. 

Calum says:

'Tha mi air mo dhòigh an duais seo fhaighinn is tha mi a' dèanamh fiughair ri bhith a' dol an sàs san sgeama.'

'I am delighted to receive this award and can't wait to participate in the Ignite scheme.'

Ignite Fellowship 2024 shortlist

The panel would also like to offer their congratulations to the following shortlisted writers:

• Madeline Docherty 
• John Gerard Fagan
• Angie Spoto