Maltese writer and performer Davinia Hamilton has been awarded the prestigious Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship to pursue a Master’s degree in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK.The scholarship is awarded to one writer of exceptional promise each year and supports a place on UEA’s highly respected Prose Writing course, a programme that has produced some of the biggest names in literature, including Kazuo Ishiguro, Anne Enright and Ian McEwan.“I am so honoured to receive the Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship,” Hamilton said. “It allows me to focus on developing my work, which always seeks to situate Maltese stories within a wider literary field.”Hamilton is already making waves internationally. Her play Blanket Ban, co-written with Marta Vella, has been staged abroad and picked up major accolades, including the Edinburgh Untapped Award and a Social Cause Award at the Premju Għall-Arti. The play was also published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama in 2022.She has also published poetry, with her chapbook “i cannot speak it but it comes”, and her work has appeared widely both online and in print.More recently, Hamilton contributed a monologue to the upcoming production Her Say III, directed by Charlotte Grech, which will be staged at Spazju Kreattiv in Valletta.At UEA, she will join a global cohort of emerging writers, adding a Maltese voice to one of the world’s most respected creative writing programmes.The Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship is linked to the internationally renowned Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards globally, further cementing this achievement as a major milestone for Hamilton, and for Maltese literature on the international stage.Tag a writer who needs to see this!•