Five Scottish-based writers have been awarded the Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, giving them the opportunity to spend at least one month at the Hôtel Chevillon at Grez-sur-Loing in France to concentrate on a new writing project. The successful Fellows were announced today - Monday 3 December – marking the anniversary of Stevenson’s death in 1894.

The successful writers are:

David Leddy - a playwright based in Glasgow who intends to use his time in Grez-sur-Loing to branch out in a new direction and write a series of short stories.

Raman Mundair - writer, poet, playwright, live artist and visual artist. Raman was born in India and grew up in Manchester but is now based in Shetland. She hopes to use the residency to do more intensive research for a novel based on Amrita Sher-Gil and Inayat Khan, two Indian women - one an artist, the other a spy for the British - who
lived and worked in France just before and during the Second World War.

James Robertson - acclaimed novelist, poet and short story writer who hopes the residency will provide breathing space to work on new poetry.

Eleanor Thom - up-and-coming writer based in Glasgow whose first novel The Tin-Kin won the New Writing Ventures Fiction award. She hopes to spend her time in France researching for new work.

Brian Whittingham - poet, fiction writer, editor and playwright and ex- steelworker/ draftsman, born and lives in Glasgow. He wants to use his time to focus on a work of fiction for which he has the characters and ideas but now needs time to develop. The tunnels of thought are shorter with poetry than they are with stories or novels so this time at Grez will be most welcome and he hopes to 'travel in the mind'.

The Fellowship is run by the Scottish Arts Council and supported by the National Library of Scotland, and is now in its twelfth year. The Fellowship provides writers with the opportunity to spend at least a month concentrating on developing their writing, providing essential time and space away from every-day commitments to concentrate on their
creativity.

The successful writers were selected on the basis of the quality of their work and the usefulness of the residency to their creative development. They were chosen by an expert judging panel which included previous RLS Fellows Janice Galloway and Chris Dolan, and representatives from the Scottish Arts Council and National Library of Scotland.

The writers will be heading out to France at various stages throughout summer 2008, following in the footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson, who frequently visited the Hôtel Chevillon during the 1870s. More recently the Hôtel Chevillon has been turned into an international arts centre run by The Foundation Grez-sur-Loing in Sweden part of the Stiftelsen
Organisation in Sweden. The Hôtel provides the ideal accommodation and setting to provide writers and artists with creative space.

Commenting on this year's fellowships Gavin Wallace, Head of Literature at the Scottish Arts Council said: ‘The strength and diversity of writers selected for this year’s RLS Fellowships are testament to the breadth of literary talent in Scotland – in recent years the number of Fellowships offered has increased greatly.

‘The vast majority of contemporary writers have to juggle their writing time with a range of other work and family commitments, so being offered this creative space is invaluable. Equally importantly, in following the footsteps of the great Francophile and cosmopolitan Robert Louis Stevenson, they carry the torch of Scottish literature’s strong international dynamic’.

NLS Director of Collection Development Cate Newton said: “It was a great pleasure to take part in the selection committee for the RLS awards. The standard, range and number of entries were extremely high this year so the judging process was a difficult but most enjoyable experience.”