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New award launched in memory of music journalist

 An arts journalism award has been set up in memory of a music journalist who died two years ago after a battle with cancer.

Jan Fairley, left, was a world music journalist who was a long-term contributor to The Scotsman but lost her battle with colon cancer at the age of 63 in 2012.

Now the Jan Fairley Memorial Award has been created to recognise an Edinburgh-based journalist at the start of their career who is writing about the arts with an international outlook.

The award has been created by the Edinburgh Freelance Branch of the National Union of Journalists, where Jan was the welfare officer, and the winner of the award will receive a certificate and £300, while some of their winning entry will also be published in The Scotsman.

Jan was known as a champion of world music and made a number of documentaries for Radio 4, while she was also a former director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Entrants for the award should write about the arts in a way which sets it in a wider social or international context and should not have been employed as a professional journalist for longer than five years.

The closing date for entries is 30 October and the judging panel will be chaired by Edinburgh University music professor Simon Frith, ahead of an awards ceremony next January.

Information about entering the award can be viewed here.