The 2026 Young Wild Writers Competition is now open for entries

Young voices for nature need to be heard!

Each year, Hen Harrier Action host a competition to find some of the UK’s best Young Wild Writers. Each year we suggest a theme for the competition. In 2025 the theme was “Capture the moment” and you can find the winning entries for this here for some inspiration.

This year our Young Wild Writer’s competition was launched on 9th May, at our annual Skydancer Day, by children’s author Gill Lewis.

Sponsored by Opticron, this competition is open to young people aged from 5-16 years, and is split into the categories of Young (5-8 years), Junior (9-12 years) and Senior (13-16 years).

Our theme this year is:

We’re looking for original writing on the theme of the natural world and its inhabitants having to share the space. This could involve humans and any other aspect of nature such as animals, plants, or habitats where nature lives.

Writing could express human interaction with nature, or where humans haven’t shared well with nature, or where two animals are fighting for space or food. For example, plants growing through a brick wall, animals at a watering hole, birds visiting a bird feeder near houses, or humans building over the habitats of many important animals and plants. These are examples of “our shared planet” and are interesting or important to recognise.

We want young people entering the competition to write about some aspect of our shared planet that is meaningful to them, but it can be about any part of living alongside nature. Young people entering can write stories, poems, articles, writing, letters or words of a song up to 500 words.

Entering the Young Wild Writers Competition

Any young person between the ages of 5 and 16 on 1st May 2026 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 be about Our Shared Planet.

Entries will be accepted from Saturday 9th May, and the closing date for entries is midnight on Sunday 26^th July, with the winners in each category to be announced by Gill on Saturday 8th August.

Age Categories

Sponsored by Opticron, the competition will be open to young people from 5-16 years, and prizes will be awarded in each of 3 categories – Young (5-8 years), Junior (9-12 years) and Senior (13-16 years).

Entries from schools and classes will be welcome, and teachers can download a poster for the competition below.

About Your Judge: Children's Author Gill Lewis

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 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

Each category winner will receive a pair of Opticron Adventurer II 8×42 Binoculars! Each category will also have two runners up, who 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.

Founded in the UK in 1970, Opticron is a family-owned business with fifty years’ experience in consumer optics, and a leading UK supplier of high-quality binoculars, field scopes, digiscoping equipment and accessories, providing wildlife watchers with the best mix of quality, choice, value and customer service. Offering a huge range of compact, lightweight and affordable equipment, with an innovative approach and a drive to deliver ‘smaller, lighter, brighter, sharper’ across every product in their range.

Opticron is delighted to be sponsoring the Young Wild Photographer competition again this year, and wishes the best of luck to all the entrants.

Full Rules of Entry

Word count: Up to 500 words (excluding title)

Subject: Our Shared Planet – living alongside nature

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 26th July 2026

Winners announcement: 8th August 2026

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 2026. For example, if an entrant turns 9 years old on the 1st May, they should enter the Junior (9-12) category

Prizes:

Overall winner: A pair of Opticron Adventurer II 8×42 Binoculars, and online author visit to the winner’s school*

Winner of each age category: Opticron Adventurer II 8×42 Binoculars

Two runners-up in each age category: £20 book voucher

(*If the entrant is home-schooled, then an alternative online tutorial will be offered)

You Could Enter the 2026 Young Wild Photographer Competition too!

And if you enjoy photography more than creative writing, why not enter our Young Wild Photographer Competition instead? Or you could enter both!

This year’s Young Wild Photographer contest shares the same age categories as Young Wild Writers, and there are Opticron binoculars to be won in each of the three categories – Young, Junior and Senior, plus £20 book vouchers for the runners-up.

The theme for the competition, announced by wildlife photographer Richard Birchett on Skydancer Day, is – The Colour of the Wild.

Discover the Winners of the 2025 Young Wild Writers Competition

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.

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

Young Category: 5-8 years old

Winner – Sky Kwok – Age 8

Swallow’s Journey Above the Earth

The judges loved Sky’s acrostic poem. There is the simplicity of observation and wonder within the rhythm of the words. It made the judges want to stop and look up and consider the swallows’ journeys.

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.

Senior Category: 13-16 years

Winner Emily Hunt – Age 15

To the Roost

The judges were incredibly impressed with Emily’s lyrical piece of writing about Jackdaws. Corvids are often demonised, and many seen as vermin. But Emily’s prose helps us to see the world from the jackdaw’s perspective – a real bird’s eye view. We feel we are an individual jackdaw as well as part of the flock. The writing achieved a sense of movement, of being swept along on the rollercoaster ride of the swoops and turns and the ‘rotating mandala’ of flight. The writing explores the theme of journey through the life of a jackdaw and also their physical journey; ‘learn navigation by hawthorn and ash, the slight twists of the book.’

Hen Harrier Action was delighted that Emily could join us at the Wild Justice Hen Harrier Fest on the 24th August 2022 to read her prose on the stage to great applause, and again on the Skydancer Day 2023 live broadcast in May, with Megan and Indy.

Emily is certainly a writer to watch for the future. You can find more about her, and her writing here – Twitter @em_nature

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.

Young Wild Writers Competition