GDST Creative Writing Year 12 & 13 – highly commended

This year, the theme for the GDST Creative Writing Prize was ‘Kindness’. The entries were judged by Ewa Jozefkowicz, an alumna of Notting Hill and Ealing High School.

Ewa Jozefkowicz was a student at Notting Hill and Ealing High School (Class of 2005). She always loved writing and is now a children’s author. Her debut novel, The Mystery of the Colour Thief, published by Zephyr (Bloomsbury), was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. She has since written five other mystery books for middle-grade readers. Her new series for early readers, The Woodland Explorers Club, is launching in May 2024.

Ewa commented:
“I hugely enjoyed judging these entries on the theme of kindness, and was impressed by the variety of genres and interpretations of the subject. I was blown away by the emotion in many of the pieces, and the level of writing was far beyond the age-range of the writers. I would encourage all entrants to work further on these pieces – perhaps developing them into short stories. The idea for my first published book actually came to me during a creative writing lesson at Notting Hill and Ealing High School. So it’s never too early to start!”

Congratulations to Freya B (Lower Sixth) on receiving Highly Commended for her creative piece, ‘Dinner with Joanna‘. Ewa commented, “A very fascinating story! Brilliant dialogue and such fully formed characters. It took me a while to understand the relationship between the narrator and Joanna, but enjoyed every element of their interaction and I found myself wanting to read more. Perhaps you might develop this into a longer piece of writing?”

Read Freya’s creative writing piece