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Lily Margaret Greenway, 2022 ELF Scholarship recipient

An award rooted in excellence, The Sandra Brown Excellence in Literary Fiction Scholarship (ELF) was established in 2008 to provide a full tuition scholarship to a talented TCU student writer who demonstrates both academic achievement and significant potential as a fiction writer. The scholarship was created in honor of TCU alumna and best-selling novelist Sandra Brown.

TCU’s 2022 ELF Scholarship recipient, Lily Margaret Greenway, is a rising junior who is an English and religion double major, as well as a member of the John V. Roach Honors College. From Little Rock, Arkansas, Greenway is focused on becoming a professional author and hopes to be published before she graduates from the university.

The ELF Scholarship is one of TCU’s most prestigious academic awards, and this past year a large number of applicant portfolios was submitted, making judging quite difficult, said Dan Williams, who helps with the applications process. Ultimately, both the internal and external judges gave Greenway the top ranking. Williams, who is also the TCU Honors Professor of Humanities and director of the TCU Press, said, “A talented and dedicated writer, Lily Margaret is exactly the kind of student Sandra and Michael Brown had in mind when they endowed the scholarship.”

ELF Scholarship applicants must be an English or writing major and submit a portfolio of 50 to 75 pages. The portfolio must include an example, or examples, of the student’s original fiction, a reflective introduction that discusses the student’s writing, goals and interests, and two letters of recommendation. Once awarded, the recipient must maintain a 3.0 GPA and remain active in TCU’s literary culture.

For the ELF application, Greenway spent significant time looking for something to best represent her writing. She eventually settled on a section of one of her completed novels that details a dystopian North America where citizens rebel against a restrictive government until all structures shatter.

Greenway noted that when she first learned of the ELF Scholarship during her senior year of high school, she was determined to apply. “I wanted to attend college to sharpen my skills as a creative writer,” she said. “I have a deep TCU legacy in my family, and my heart was here long before I showed up on campus two years ago.”

Greenway hopes to publish her first novel before completion of her undergraduate degree. After graduating, she intends to pursue a graduate degree in English at TCU.

The deadline to apply for the next ELF Scholarship will be in early December 2022. For further information regarding the scholarship or to learn about previous winners, please visit elf.tcu.edu.

The author of over 80 novels, more than 70 of which have appeared on the New York Times best-seller list, Sandra Brown has sold about 80 million books. She was a 4.0 English major at TCU and later received an honorary doctorate from the university and was elected to the Texas Literary Hall of Fame.