Winners of Rupert Brooke Literary Prize competition announced

The winners of the 2018 prizes were announced at a special event at Rugby School on the evening of Thursday, May 3.

The successful entries in the four categories – primary, junior, intermediate and senior – were presented by Rugby School drama students, either in full or as an extract in the case of the longer passages.

The competition was dominated by three schools this year – Rugby High, Rugby School and Crescent – throwing down the gauntlet to other schools in the Rugby area to take up the challenge in future years.

The winning entrants certainly set the bar high.

One of the judges, Alix Scott-Martin, said: “We were astonished by the quality of this year’s Rupert Brooke Literary Prize entries and our winners are a group of very exciting writers indeed.

“We received over 230 poems and short stories from schoolchildren in the Rugby area on the theme of water.

“The winning pieces are impressive in their range and there is clearly a growing community of young writers in our town who are flexing their creative muscles and having serious fun with words,” she added.

In the senior section the first prize went to Rugby High’s Katie Wang with her piece Sorry. In joint second were Mary Waterman and Hannah Spurr, both from Rugby High and third was Rachel Stevens from Rugby School.

In the intermediate section, the winner was Ruby Murphy with her entry Sink, second was Delphi Fothergill, also from Rugby High and joint third were Isabel Cai and Joshua Nevill, both from Rugby School.

In the junior section, there was joint first, Anna Hunter from Rugby School with The Last Whale Song and Anna Flynn from Rugby High with The Seamstress in the Bay. In second place was Lottie O’Brien and in third was Heather Dargie, both Rugby High.

In the primary section it was a clean sweep for Crescent pupils, with a joint first for Ella Knight with The Lost Waterfall and Olivia Sarkies with a piece called Water. In joint second were Alex Reynolds and Vignesh Sadasivan.