At the heart of The Scotsman’s coverage of the Edinburgh Festivals each year is a team of highly talented and hugely experienced critics. However, we're well aware that great critics don't just appear out of nowhere, so for the last few years we've been running a mentoring scheme in partnership with the Fringe.

Since 2018, we've been offering the winner of their Fringe Young Writers Award the chance to undertake a series of mentoring sessions with some of our longest-serving critics, with a view to writing ten reviews for us the following year, paid at the going freelance rate.

In 2018, Flora Gosling won the award, and, following three mentoring sessions with Scotsman critics, joined our review team in the summer of 2019.

Edinburgh's Royal Mile during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe PIC: Jane Barlow/PA

The 2019 award-winner Ariane Branigan was supposed to be reviewing for us in the summer of 2020, but then the pandemic intervened and we had to put the scheme on hold, so she joined our review team in 2022.

This year, after winning the 2022 award, Suzanne O'Brien has spent time honing her review style with our theatre critic Joyce McMillan and our film critic Alistair Harkness, and she is now out there in the thick of it, filing reviews for our daily Festival supplement and scotsman.com.

The 2023 Fringe Young Writers Award is open to anyone aged between 16 and 21, and is given to the writer of the best review of a Fringe show taking place this month. In the interests of making the award as accessible as possible, both published and unpublished work will be considered. The deadline for submissions is 3 September, and the winner will be announced on 9 September. Full details of how to enter this year’s award can be found on the Fringe website at https://www.edfringe.com/take-part/awards/journalism

Fringe Young Writers Award 2023: a chance to be mentored by Scotsman critics