Enter The 2025 Young Wild Writers Competition Today
Young voices for nature need to be heard
Every year, Hen Harrier Action runs a competition to find the UK’s best Young Wild Writers. This year’s competition was launched on the 10th of May in our Skydancer Day live broadcast, by children’s author Gill Lewis. You can watch it live, or see the recording on our YouTube channel for extra tips from Gill.
This year’s competition theme is Capture the Moment.
The competition is open to children and young people from 5-16 years, and prizes will be awarded in each of 3 categories – Young (5-8), Junior (9-12) and Senior (13-16).
Discover all of last year’s winners, and enjoy reading the overall winning entry – eight-year-old Aedan Garvey’s powerful story of The Last Axolotl – here. All the 2024 winning entries were announced live on stage by Gill Lewis at Action for Wildlife Day last year, and we are thrilled that Gill will be doing the judging again this year.
Skydancer Day is Hen Harrier Action’s flagship annual live broadcast, which this year came from Malham Cove in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales.
The Theme: Capture the Moment
We are looking for original writing that clearly shows a single moment in the life of a plant, animal or about the place where they live. Examples of what the subject could be are the beginning of a season, the hatching of an egg, the opening of a flower, the first drops of rain on a leaf, the arrival of the combine harvester in a field, or the melting of a glacier. Stories must be set in natural conditions, but this could be anywhere from your back garden to the Sahara Desert.
All these are examples of ‘moments in time’ that are seen in nature and are very important. We want young people entering the competition to capture a moment in nature that is important to them, but it can be about anything – a bird, insect, weather, trees or anything else.
Entering the Young Wild Writers Competition
Any young person between the ages of 5 and 16 on 1st May 2025 and resident in the UK can enter the competition. By entering the competition, you agree that Hen Harrier Action can publish your entry on the website, in newsletters and on social media. We will always give you proper credits and you will otherwise retain ownership and copyright.
Entrants can write stories, poems, articles, prose, letters or song lyrics up to 500 words, but they must in some way Capture the Moment.
Entries will be accepted from Saturday 10th May, and the closing date for entries is midnight on Sunday 6th July, with the winners in each category to be announced by Gill on the 9th August.
The prizes for 2025 include RSPB Puffin binoculars, £50 book tokens and for the overall winner, an online author visit by Gill Lewis to their school.
Poster for Schools and Teachers
Every year we receive entries from whole classes, and last year, a group of classmates from St Hilda’s Girls’ Prep School jointly won a prize in the Young age category for their entries on Scottish Wildcats.
Entries from schools and classes are welcome, and we have created a poster in pdf form that teachers can download and display on the school or classroom noticeboard.
Gill Lewis is an award-winning children’s author, with the much-loved Willow Wildthing and Puppy Academy series for younger readers to her name, alongside celebrated and best-selling books for older children including Moon Bear, Gorilla Dawn, Skydancer and Eagle Warrior among her published works.
Once again this year, we are delighted that Gill has agreed to judge the creative writing entries to the competition, and we thank her for her commitment.
A former vet, wildlife enthusiast and environmental campaigner, Gill loves to read the entries that flood in for the Young Wild Writers competition – almost 350 last year – and is a passionate advocate for the power of words and books to fuel the imagination of young readers and instil a lifelong love of nature and the environment.
The Prizes to be Won
The winner in each of the three age categories (Young, Junior and Senior) will receive a pair of RSPB Puffin Binoculars and a £50 book token. Two runners-up in each category will receive a £20 book token.
The overall winning entry from all three categories will additionally win an online author visit for their school from Gill Lewis.
And if your skills are more visual than written, why not enter our new Young Wild Photographer Competition instead? Or you could enter both!
This year’s new-look Young Wild Photographer contest shares the same age categories as Young Wild Writer, and there are prizes on offer in each of the three categories – Young, Junior and Senior.
The theme for the competition, also announced on Skydancer Day is Capture the Moment
Full Rules of Entry
Word count: Up to 500 words (excluding title)
Subject: Capture the Moment
Writing Style: Any writing style (e.g. letter, prose, poem, story, song lyric)
No illustrations please: accompanying illustrations will not be considered
Judging criteria: Originality, underlying ideas, how the writer engages and communicates, fresh views on a subject; entries will not be judged on spelling and grammar
One entry per person only
Entries must be the original work of the entrant and must not have been entered in or won any other writing competition
Deadline for submissions: midnight on Sunday 6th July 2025
Winners announcement: 9th August 2025
Late entries will not be considered
The judges’ decisions are final
Entrants shall be not less than, or no more or less than, their age categories on the 1st May 2025. For example, if an entrant turns 9 years old on the 1st May, they should enter the Junior (9-12) category
Prizes:
Overall winner: RSPB Puffin Binoculars, £50 book voucher and online author visit to the winner’s school*
Winner of each age category: RSPB Puffin Binoculars, £50 book voucher
Two runners-up in each age category: £20 book voucher
(*If the entrant is home-schooled, then an alternative online tutorial will be offered)
The 2024 Young Wild Writers Competition
Award-winning author Gill Lewis launched the 2024 Young Wild Writers Competition
The 2024 Young Wild Writers competition was launched live on Skydancer Day by children’s author Gill Lewis, and winners were announced by Gill at Action for Wildlife Day.
There were three categories:
– Young 5-8 Years
– Junior 9-12 Years
– Senior 13-16 Years
As Gill puts it, “Words have the power to change hearts and minds; they inform, engage, enrage and empower people. Young voices calling for change need to be heard. The future ecologists, town planners, politicians, and scientists must have the natural world at the core of all their decision making”.
You can find details of all the 2024 winners here and watch Gill announce the winners and talk about the exceptional creative writing of their winning entries on our website here.
Young voices for nature need to be heard.
Each year, Hen Harrier Action hosts a competition to find the UK’s best Young Wild Writers. This year’s competition was launched on Skydancer Day by author Gill Lewis, and the theme Gill has chosen for 2024 is Human Impact.
Wildlife, nature and the environment is increasingly threatened by the actions of us, the human species. Whether by small incremental impacts – littering, disturbance of nesting birds, the use of toxic chemicals in our gardens – or by big environmental changes – the intensification of agriculture, the relentless encroachment of new housing on natural landscapes, the discharging of sewage and chemicals into our rivers and seas.
All these things have devastating consequences for our birds, plants, mammals and fish. There is no let-up in the decline of the UK’s wildlife, according to the State of Nature Report 2023. We want our young entrants this year to think about the effect of Human Impact on our landscapes, riverscapes and seascapes.
Entrants can write stories, poems, articles, prose or letters up to 500 words, but they must be related in some way to Human Impact.
The closing date for entries was midnight on Sunday the 7th July, with the winners in each category to be announced by Gill at Action for Wildlife Day on the 10th August.
The prizes for 2024 include RSPB Puffin binoculars, £50 book tokens and other goodies, and are featured on our website.
The Rules
Word count: Up to 500 words (excluding title)
Subject: Human Impact
Writing Style: Any writing style (e.g. letter, prose, poem, story)
No illustrations please: accompanying illustrations will not be considered
Judging criteria: Originality, underlying ideas, how the writer engages and communicates, fresh views on a subject; entries will not be judged on spelling and grammar
One entry per person only
Entries must be the original work of the entrant and must not have been entered in or won any other writing competition
Deadline for submissions: midnight on Sunday 7th July 2024
Winners announcement: 10th August 2024 at Action for Wildlife Day
Late entries will not be considered
The judges’ decisions are final
Entrants shall be not less than, or no more or less than, their age categories on the 10th August 2024. For example, if an entrant turns 9 years old on the 10th August, they should enter the Junior (9-12) category
Prizes:
Overall winner: RSPB Puffin Binoculars, £50 book voucher and online author visit to the winner’s school*
Winner of each age category: RSPB Puffin Binoculars, £50 book voucher
Two runners-up in each age category: £20 book voucher
(*If the entrant is home-schooled, then an alternative online tutorial will be offered)
Entry for the Competition has now closed
Download the Competition Poster for Your School or Youth Group Here
We welcome support from schools, and we’d be delighted to receive entries from Primary, Junior and Secondary schoolchildren, aged 5-16 years.
Along with individual prizes for students, the overall winner will earn an online author visit to their school by children’s author Gill Lewis.
For Teachers:
Why not download our competition entry poster to print and post on your school or classroom notice board?
Discover the Winners of our Young Wild Writers Competition at Action for Wildlife Day on the 10th August
As featured in:
2023 Winners Announced
See the Full List of Winners Here
Read All the Winning and Commended Entries Here
Read 2022's Winning Entries
Junior Category: 9-12 years
Winner – Henry Gill – Age 11
We Run
The judges loved Henry’s piece of writing about wolves. Henry effectively uses all the wolfs’ senses to help us imagine what it is to be a wolf and understand the threats they face from humans. The short sentence structure built the tension, as we ran with the wolves, stopping and listening, stopping and watching.
Writing that helps us build empathy with animals helps to change the narrative around
animals, especially those, like wolves, that have been demonised in literature.
There’s more inspiration on our YouTube channel.
Watch as Gill Lewis launched the competition live with Megan McCubbin and Indy Kiemel Greene on Skydancer Day 2023:
And discover how one young writer’s winning entry – My Patch of Green, by Neha Narne – helped save a much-loved allotment from the developer’s bulldozers.