The Department of English at Queen Mary University of London is delighted to announce a new writing competition. Designed to foster and reward the best new writing by students in Years 11, 12 and 13 from across the UK, we will be awarding one prize for an original piece of Creative Writing and one prize for an original Essay.
A shortlist of entries will be drawn up by an expert panel from the Department of English. Winners will be selected by novelist and Queen Mary English graduate Leo Vardiashvili, author of Hard by a Great Forest (2024). Leo was named as one of the Observer’s 10 Best New Novelists for 2024 and shortlisted for the prestigious Wilbur Smith Prize.
The winners will be announced at an event at Queen Mary in late Spring. They will each be awarded £250. Those short-listed will also receive a certificate of commendation.
If you have any queries please email us at:
Winners and Runners up
In its first year the prizes had 72 entries from students in year 11, 12, and 13 at 45 different UK schools and colleges. Thank you to all entrants: you will receive individual e-mails with feedback on your submissions.
Creative Writing — judged by Leo Vardiashvili.
Winner
Isabelle Mugford, Barton Peveril Sixth Form College, Year 12, ‘The Paper Boat’.
A fascinating glimpse into an undefined culture. The small peek we’re given is all the more beautiful for its transience – like the lifespan of a paper boat. What stood out to me about this piece, and also differentiated it from others, is the hopeful tone and just a tantalising amount of melancholy. Ultimately, it was the bittersweet contrast between sadness and hope that tipped the balance for me in choosing this piece over the others.
Runners Up
Maya Tidey, The City Academy, Hackney, Year 13, ‘These Waters’.
An intense and compelling meditation on life and love. I loved the clever reversals of tropes – “…you must sink in order to swim” – and brutal recognition of truths not often told – “the waves do not end when you do.” A strikingly impressive piece. Mature, and perhaps even wise, beyond the writer’s years. This will stay with me a while.
Cecile Johnston, Highgate School Year 12, ‘When the Sky Forgot Us’.
I loved the cleverly deployed device in this piece – this heart-breaking conversation, doomed to remain unreciprocated. I felt a very strong urge to make editorial suggestions with this piece in particular, because the quality of the writing and imagery is already touching distance of something I can see being published.
Honourable Mention
Hibah Nasir, King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls, Birmingham Year 12 ‘Crossing Lethe’.
An intensely rich, searching piece, with unique and effective turns of phrase. A glimpse, if only fleeting, of the kind of heartbreak that leaves a permanent mark.
Critical Essay — judged by Will Bowers and Ed Charlton.
Winner
Maisie Johnson, Queen Elizabeth's Girls' School Year 12, ‘How does Jane Austen use water as a motif in Persuasion to represent social change and growing freedom?’
An excellent study that considers the political and philosophical import of Austen’s two very different watery locations in Persuasion. Throughout there was an impressive range of quotations and close analysis from the text, but you also show great aptitude in setting the novel in its recent historical context (the Napoleonic wars) and in the long debate over the role of the Navy in British Imperial power.
Runners Up
Sasha Mostafa, Manchester High School for Girls, Year 13, ‘Divine Agents in the Oceans of Wheatley, Hayden and Coleridge’.
This was a remarkably insightful and probing examination of early African-American poetry on the Middle Passage. That you were able to draw this into such rich comparison with Coleridge made things all the more rewarding. We were eager to read more of this and very hope that you maintain this interest into future undergraduate study. You clearly have a very strong aptitude for lively, comparative literary analysis.
Harriet Cain, Barton Peveril Sixth Form College, Year 12, ‘Water as known by Sylvia Plath’.
An enjoyable and lively reading of Plath’s ‘Crossing the Water’, which showed a forensic attention to the poem stanza-by-stanza. We loved how you didn’t simply observe linguistic and poetic effects, but made thinking about how these formal elements of the poem enact meaning.
Honourable Mention
Eleanor Rea, Putney High School, Year 12, ‘Water in Jane Eyre’.
The idea that water, by contrast to fire, serves as 'to demonstrate the warring elements of Jane Eyre’s identity', as you put it, was a brilliant opening. The essay continued in a similarly arresting fashion. We thought your analysis was both meticulous and inspiring, unlocking the guiding energy of the novel. Indeed, water's own variety (sometimes soothing, other times raging) gave you a powerful set of symbols to work out Jane's influence over Rochester. In short, this was a highly accomplished piece of literary analysis.
2024/25 Theme: ‘Water’
If you’re submitting creative writing, perhaps you want to reflect on the water that rushes through your street after a heavy downpour? or on the chronic shortage of water elsewhere? What about the threat and, conversely, the opportunities that rivers and seas represent, especially to those seeking to escape somewhere? In recent years, the United Kingdom’s waters have become more and more politicised, whether we are talking about the perils of the English Channel or the toxicity of our rivers. Water often unites people as much as it separates them. At its most fundamental, water is what nourishes and sustains all living things.
Those submitting an essay should consider the role of water in literature in English, where in some kind of form or another it has played a leading role. Think, for instance, about the sea in Shakespeare’s The Tempest or the storm that rages through King Lear. Poets too, like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Derek Walcott, and Nathalie Diaz, often find themselves drawn into watery worlds. In responding to this theme, we encourage you to be as creative and inventive as you wish. You are welcome to think about the role of water in literature over time, in different places around the world, or at diverse scales.