winners: 2023 kids’ story writing competition

We are delighted to announce the winners of this year’s competition! What an absolute joy it was to be able to celebrate together, especially with the wonderful Karen Comer to bestow the honours.

Thank you to every single one of you who put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard to create your wonderful stories.

Each of our winning entries were standouts in their age groups, but for those of you who haven’t won a prize this year – we thoroughly enjoyed reading your creations too. Keep honing your skills and maybe 2024 will be your turn!

We hope you enjoy reading through and looking at the winning entries as much as we have – click on the titles below to view each winner’s story.

Prep to Year 2

WINNERS:

• (6yo): Eadee Butcher for Fat Cat 
• (7yo): Sienna La Greca for My New Friend

HIGHLY COMMENDED ENTRIES:

• Sophie Jones for The Fairy-Tale Queen
• Sylvie Lewis for The Magical Experience in Space
• Miles Grubb for Foxing Around

Years 7 to 9

WINNER:

Camryn Small for Lucy’s Wish

HIGHLY COMMENDED ENTRIES:

• Emily O’Shea for Undercover
• Sophia Van Zanten for Lights Out

Years 3 & 4

WINNER:

Grace Peagram for The Peculiar Button

HIGHLY COMMENDED ENTRIES:

• Hugh Gallagher for Untitled
• Lily Ricciardello for The Wolves and the Mysterious Fire

Years 10 to 12

WINNER:

Ruby King for Liked and Disliked

HIGHLY COMMENDED ENTRIES:

• Ella Maciver for The Monster
• Olivia Del Piano for The Red Buttons

Karen gave us a wonderful talk about the challenges of being an author – including explaining how it had taken her 13 YEARS to finish writing her most recent book, Sunshine on Vinegar Street.  She introduced us to the format of the verse novel – where the story is written in lines like poetry, rather than solid paragraphs of prose.  Both her books are written in this way and it offers quite a different and engaging experience for the reader.

Karen also spoke about how she creates an art journal as part of her writing process – using the journal to visually capture the ideas for her writing as they arise, without the pressure of sitting down and writing large tracts of text. She created her art journals based on an online course by deaf artist, Asphyxia, whose wonderful young adult illustrated book Future Girl came out in 2020.  You can read more about the online course HERE.