Young Writers Prize-Giving 2025

Every legend is made through the stories that are told about them, and this year more than 2000 kids across 70 schools created their own in Wimbledon BookFest’s Young Writers Competition.

Winners and runners up received their awards on stage at the New Wimbledon Theatre in front of pupils from schools in South London and Surrey. Children’s author Emma Carroll helped present the awards alongside the judging panel.

The theme was ‘The Legend’, inspiring stories that transported readers to Ancient Greece and magical realms, but also celebrated legends closer to home: from AFC Wimbledon players to superhero mums and dads.

The National Literacy Trust has highlighted the importance of writing to help young people express their ideas and feelings, a focus shared by the judges, who looked for creativity and imagination when deciding their 180 winners.

This year’s overall winner is Ana Gumende from The Ursuline School. Her poem Soldier Proletariat celebrates art’s defiance in a white-collar world ‘untrained to tackle technicolour.’ Over 500 children in the audience cheered as she received her new iPad on stage.

This competition has impacts beyond the prizes, however. Dr Amy Waite, chair judge of the senior prize and Senior Lecturer at University of Roehampton, emphasises the importance of events like these for “the next generation of young readers and writers, right on the horizon, opening up empathy for everyone.”

“That’s what reading and writing offers the world and generates: empathy. Feeling and thinking about other people, and putting yourselves in other people’s shoes and lives and understanding their world views… and I think even more in this day and age that’s what we need.”

Just as children’s literature “endlessly draws you back in,” Amy hopes that the winners and runners up will remember these achievements and “will carry that with them for the rest of their lives and keep them writing and keep them reading.”

The Young Writers Competition is part of BookFest’s schools programme, which offers thousands of pupils access to book events by popular children’s authors every year. This year, BookFest introduced their writing resource bank, including writing prompts and tips from authors to encourage young people’s imaginations. The entire schools’ programme is made possible by the support of our Principal Education Sponsor, the University of Roehampton.

Upcoming school events include bestselling author Liz Pichon with her new series The Mubbles; Christopher Edge with the sequel to his smash hit The Escape Room; Wonka actor Paterson Joseph with his inspiring novel Ten: Children Who Changed The World; and the star of Channel 4’s Fur Babies and CBBC’s The Pets Factor, Dr James Greenwood.

The 180 winning and highly commended stories and poems were published in the Young Writers Competition Anthologies 2025, which can be read here. All writers who were featured in the anthology will receive a copy and all those who were submitted by their schools receive a certificate for their entry.

By Samara Watts