Along with Angus Wilson, the novelist and critic Malcolm Bradbury was responsible for establishing the MA in Creative Writing at UEA in 1970, the first of its kind in the UK. He taught on the programme until his retirement in 1995. Following his death in 2000 a memorial fund was established in his name, which supports two annual bursaries equivalent to Home/EU academic fees for the Prose Fiction MA, currently £5,000 each.

The recipients are chosen by a panel of tutors on the MA, based on the material submitted by the students in their application portfolios. Among the previous recipients of the bursaries are Christie Watson in 2007, whose first novel, Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away, was the winner of the 2012 Costa First Novel Award, and Tom Benn in 2009, who joined the MA after completing his BA at UEA and whose first novel, The Doll Princess, was published in 2012.