GDST Creative writing success
We are proud to announce that Bea, year 8, and Sophie, year 12, have won awards in the GDST Creative Writing competition. Both students will be awarded a Waterstones Gift Card for £100.
The theme this year was ‘Belonging’ and all the entries were judged by Rachel Hore, an alumna of Sutton High School.
Bea’s piece called ‘Belonging’ was praised for being a “particularly well-dramatised and closely-observed story about two English-speaking sisters who don’t fit in to their new French school.”
Sophie’s work called ‘Homelessness’ was described as a “multi-layered poem, which challenges common views of homelessness with freshness and a mature approach. Sophie uses rhythm and repetition to underpin her meaning.”
Sophie said, “I am so honoured to have won this competition! I have always loved writing. When I saw the theme was ‘Belonging’ I felt inspired to write about my experiences arriving in a new country. My poem was a wonderful outlet for my emotions and helped me process my feelings about leaving South Africa.”
Bea said, "It gave me a lot of confidence because I’d never dared to do anything like that before, and it has shown me that I should take all the opportunities I can get to improve my writing."
Rachel Hore commented: “I enjoyed reading the GDST students’ creative writing and was very impressed by the overall high standard, especially given that it has been a stressful year for everybody. The theme of ‘belonging’ engendered a high number of pieces about migrants and also the subject of bullying. The experience of being lost and found featured in work by the youngest age groups, amongst whom the feeling of not belonging was also often expressed using the metaphor of toys or plants or inanimate objects. I was pleased to see several poems and also some creative non-fiction. A big thank you to all entrants - you gave me a great deal of pleasure through your writing and keep at it! Many congratulations to the winners of each group and those that I’ve highly commended.”
Rachel Hore attended Sutton High School between 1970 and 1978, after which she read Modern History at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. For many years she enjoyed a career as an editor for HarperCollins in London before moving with her family to Norwich, where she started to write fiction and taught publishing and creative writing part-time at the University of East Anglia. Rachel is now a full-time writer, the author of eleven novels, many of them Sunday Times Top Ten bestsellers. A Place of Secrets and Last Letter Home were each selected by Richard and Judy for their Book club in association with WH Smith. The Glass Painter’s Daughter (2009) was shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s Romantic Novel of the Year. A Gathering Storm (2011) was shortlisted for their Historical Novel of the Year. Her new novel, A Beautiful Spy, based on a real-life story of a 1930s female spy, was published in February 2021.