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About Young Writers

Young Writers runs national writing competitions for schools, helping to turn imagination and creativity into confidence and writing ability.

We support teachers up and down the country by creating meaningful writing competitions, themes, outstanding resources and awarding brilliant prizes. Together we can engage and inspire the imaginations of your pupils. The fun and excitement of our competitions draw children in, and they start to soak up knowledge like a sponge.

The result is greatly improved confidence in their creative writing ability and seeing their writing brought to life in a real, physical book that they can proudly put on their bookshelf.

Our Mission

We get told almost daily that children who see their work in a real book have more confidence in their writing, are encouraged to write more often, and some even go on to be aspiring authors!

This experience has given my daughter real confidence in her writing. She had a huge sense of accomplishment in seeing her work in print and hasn't stopped writing poems since! She now aspires to be an author when she grows up.

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Many of us at Young Writers were storytellers from a young age. Some of us used writing poetry as a way to process emotions and some of us found freedom and creativity in being able to express ourselves through writing.

It was this spirit that led Ian Walton, a poet rebelling against the elitism of the poetry world, to found Young Writers in 1991. He vowed to make it possible for poets and writers of all ages to share their work.

We want children to keep using their amazing gift for imagination and creativity and we will always be here to support, inspire and celebrate them!

How we do it

We've been working closely with teachers, parents and their children since 1991. In that time, we've learnt what it takes to make the best writing experiences that will help young writers to build confidence and skills.

For us at Young Writers the goal is all about celebrating writing and personal achievement. Here's how:

1

Support fun and exciting writing with great resources

This is one of our favourite parts of the job. We get to research and innovate creative ways to motivate and engage children of all ages to write. We have an amazing design team who take our wonderful ideas and create resources that bring classrooms alive across the world.

We're not just talking about black-and-white printouts, either (though there are some of those!). Our packs are bursting with illustrations that bring the themes to life and carefully guide young writers through the writing process to get the mind going with ideas and writing prompts.

2

Inspire imaginations

Imagination and creativity are arguably two of the most important skills and, in our opinion, children don't get to use them enough. This can be especially true as they get older. By engaging in a competition, pupils get to train and flex these muscles.

Guided by our themes and prompts that have been brought to life by our talented designer, pupils are supported and encouraged. Every child has the chance to enjoy creative writing, gain confidence and learn the joy of a positive writing experience, including kids who may be reluctant writers, have writing anxiety or who struggle with spelling.

The result is helping children to write their first poem to fantastical situations, deep poetry, script-flipping characters. We're always amazed at how varied and unique entries can be for any given theme - a true expression of individual imagination.

View Our Competitions
3

Celebrate creativity

Much of the thrill of our competitions comes from the journey and the process of creation. We love sharing the achievements of our young writers and celebrating their creativity in our blogs and on our social media.

However, it wouldn't be a competition without prizes, would it?

One of the ways that we celebrate creativity is to award fantastic prizes to schools and pupils that are taking part. Prizes vary from competition to competition. They include:

  • A special bookmark for every entrant
  • A certificate of merit to all young writers chosen for publication
  • Amazing creative writing goody bags & cash prizes for the top entries
  • The Young Writers' Award of Excellence for the schools that submit the best overall set of entries along with National Book Tokens or book bundles each term
  • A complimentary copy of the book for every participating school (and 1 free copy for every 30 entries)

Case Studies

We've worked with some amazing schools over the years. We have built long-standing relationships with the shared goal of spreading the joy of writing to children and young adults. Learn about how schools just like yours found the experience of working with Young Writers.

See Testimonials

Our History

1991

🎉 Young Writers was born!

Founded by Ian Walton, a poet rebelling against the elitism of the poetry world he vowed to make it possible for poets of all ages to share their work!

1999

🏢 We outgrew our building!

Young Writers was growing so fast we had to move. We relocated to Remus House in Peterborough and we still live here now. Fun fact: We have a 10,000 square foot production facility here where all Young Writers books are printed.

2001

🏹 Another string was added to the Young Writers bow!

In 2001 we branched out and, rather than just inspiring children and young adults to write poetry, we launched our first creative writing competition.

2007

💕 You're never too young to fall in love with poems!

We launched our first initiative into nurseries with My First Poem, introducing pre-school children to rhyme and poetry.

2017

🌎 Young Writers goes global!

Our first competition went live in the USA... and they loved it!

2020

🙌🏽 The year that we will never forget!

Along with the rest of the world we faced huge challenges; we adapted, innovated and came through the other side with help from our amazing customers and fans!

Wrapping Up

So that's us, in a nutshell! If you're feeling inspired to get your child or your pupils writing then check out our competitions to learn more and download your fantastic free writing resources today.

View Our Competitions
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