Literacy news
Wicked Young Writers’ Award winners announced
6 Dec 2012
The Wicked Young Writers’ Award today announced its winners for 2012 at the Apollo Victoria Theatre. Hosted by Louise Dearman, who stars as Elphaba in Wicked, with prizes presented by Michael Morpurgo, best-selling author of War Horse and Chair Judge of the Award. The Award’s judges, Michael McCabe, Executive Producer of Wicked, and Jonathan Douglas, Director of our charity, also attended the ceremony. Our Patron HRH The Duchess of Cornwall is also Patron of the Award.
During the ceremony performance poet Dean Atta led an interactive literacy workshop called “My Wicked Poem”; prompted by the show’s theme of friendship.
In addition to performing musical numbers from the hit show, Wicked cast members also performed readings of the winning entries, revealed as:
- Catherine Solway, age 7 from Dorset
- Darcey Fleming, age 10 from Southport
- Jack McEwan, age 10 from Oxford
- Aiden McConnell, age 13 from London
- Sophie Max, age 14 from London
- Scott Wilson, age 16 from Belfast
- Jon Richardson, age 18 from Nottingham
The winning entries ranged from a poem about the environment inspired by bird-watching in Suffolk, a tale about worms, moving stories about amnesia and loss, and an original retelling of the Peter Pan story.
Wicked, the long-running West End show launched the award in 2010 to recognise excellence in writing, encourage creativity and help develop writing talent in young people between 5 and 25 years of age from across all backgrounds and areas of the UK.
Wicked kindly supports the National Literacy Trust.
