Alice Wenn, one of our students, wrote the piece as her entry for the Rotary Young Writer Competition, which this year had ‘The Environment’ as its theme.

The competition is open to all schools and colleges, as well as home-schooled students and community youth organisations such as RotaKids, Scout and Guide groups, and offered prizes across three age categories: Junior (seven to 10-years-old), Intermediate (11 to 13), and Senior (14 to 17).

Alice won the District stage of the competition to go through to the Regional level, where she placed second, earning herself a certificate and a £15 gift voucher.

Entrants were asked to write a fiction or non-fiction piece of up to 550 words or a poem of up to 40 lines, with the winners in each age group progressing through three stages from District to Regional and National. 

It was the first time that the Rotary Club of Hunstanton & District had been involved in the competition.

Rotarian John Crofts said: “We wanted to challenge school children in the area, particularly as they returned to face-to-face teaching following Covid. It’s a three-stage competition designed to support and encourage the development of writing skills, and it aims to encourage young people to use their writing skills and to write with imagination and creativity.”

Lyra Cummings, a Year 6 student at Heacham Junior School, won both the District and Regional Junior stages of the Rotary Young Writer Competition with her short story about a dystopian future.