Thirty-three students from a leading girls’ school have triumphed in a world-wide creative writing competition.
The students from St Mary’s School, Cambridge, mainly in Years 7 to 9, entered the Young Writers’ Competition for children.
The competition – with the theme Around the world in 80 words – required entrants to write a story about or describe a memorable place in no more than 80 words.
The students from St Mary’s wrote about a variety of places, with titles such as ‘Whispering Palms’, ‘Mexico, a country of sight’, ‘Kenyan Carnival’, ‘Soon to be Paradise’, ‘A Scottish Picture’, ‘The Spring in my Garden’, ‘African Spirit’ and ‘Below’.
Helen Garrett, Head of English, said: “The students enjoyed the challenge of creating a story or evoking an atmosphere within a fairly tight word limit, aiming to capture what was most important to them about places they know or imagine. It is exciting to have so many selected for publication and to know that a copy of the book, Around the World in 80 Words – Adventurous Authors, will be sent to the British Library.”
Charlotte Avery, Headmistress, added: “We are delighted that thirty-three of our students have been recognised in this world-wide competition. Creative Writing is an important part of life at St Mary’s: we offer a Creative Writing Scholarship and this year we held our own inaugural Creative Writing competition for students aged 7 to 13 years old from East Anglia.”
The winning entries will be showcased in a book due to be published in May.