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The Pen to Print Awards 2025.

The 2025 Pen to Print Competition Winners Announced

The 2025 Pen to Print writing competition winners were announced on Thursday 24 July 2025 at Barking Learning Centre.

All of the winners received a trophy and a tablet PC. The winner of the Audio Play competition will get their play fully produced & recorded by our partner Alternative Stories and we will make that available when it is ready.

The Book Challenger shortlisted authors will each have their novel published and have been gifted free copies of their book in 2026 so they are all winners already! You can buy all but one book now, we hope to have the winning book released soon.

New for 2025 was The first Pen to Print Adventurous Voices Competition in conjunction with Oddizzi and The Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation where we were looking for writing that combines adventure and environmental themes, which we are hoping to expand on in 2026.

This year we have also included some audio recordings provided by Alternative Stories, played at our Awards.

And the winners are ...

The Book Challenge 2025/26 Shortlist

The Shortlisted Authors for 2025/26

The Revenge Pact

by

Yana Yanović

Misery Loves Company

by

Gulnaz Abdullah

Vigilantes Anonymous

by

Nick Burdett

The Fisherman’s Daughter

by

Lee James Broadwood

Elderwood

by

Ruth Frendo

 

Pen to Print Speech and Drama Festival 2025

Pen to Print Speech and Drama Festival with A Laughing and Sad Theatrical Mask.

Poem Winner and
Overall  Speech & Drama Festival Winner

A Walk in The Woods

by

Liyana Abhram

Pen to Print Speech and Drama Festival with A Laughing and Sad Theatrical Mask.

Monologue Winner 

News from France

by Julian Walker

The Michael Feld Writing Competition for Young People 2025

 

Key Stage 3 Winner
and
Overall Winner of the Michael Feld Memorial Salver

 Chaos

by Lurmaya Mathews

 

 

Key Stage 2 Winner

 Rumble and Grumble

by Sanjana Arunkumar

The Pen to Print Short Story Competition 2025

Winner

Mouse

by Lianne Warr

Runner-Up

Stranger On A Train

by Julian Walker

Runner-Up

The One

by Sarah Weise

The Pen to Print Poetry Competition 2025

Winner

When the Streetlights Blinked to Life

by Gillian Davies

Runner-Up

FROM A(sk) TO Z(en)

by Lucia Morciano

 

Runner-Up

Threads

by Elaine Gardner

The Pen to Print Adventurous Voices in Association with Oddizzi and The Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation

Primary Winner

Elara and the Enchanted Rainforest!

by Daisy Higgins

 

Primary Runner up

Who Said That?

by David Virlan

 

Primary Runner up

Welcome to the Rainforest – I’ve Been Waiting for You

by Aaliyah Ahmed

 

Secondary Winner

Who Am I?

by Musfira Sharif

 

Adult Winner

Off The Beaten Path

by Patrick Blosse

 

Adult Runner up

The Green Veil

by Anna Ziolkowska

 

Adult Runner up

Forest Flaw

by Elaine Waterhouse

 

Adult Runner up

The Advertisement

by Karan Sanghera

 

The Pen to Print Barking and Dagenham Staff Competition 2025

Winner

Seasons of Life

by

Mazeda Bellevue

 

Runner up

Echoes of Gaza

by Samiul Kayes

If there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.

Toni Morrison

One should begin any work of fiction with the longest, most convoluted sentence imaginable, then try to beat that record.

Charles Dickens

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the readers.

Stephen King

You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.

Octavia E.Butler

Writing is a great comfort to people like me, who are unsure of themselves and have trouble expressing themselves properly.

Agatha Christie

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Maya Angelou

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.

Louis L’Amour

It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers.

James Thurber

Creativity is contagious, pass it on.

Albert Einstein

To write successfully, one requires only a sharp pencil, a piece of paper and a hot cup of tea.

Agatha Christie

Poetry is when an emotion has found it’s thought, and the thought has found words.

Robert Frost

Writing lets you break boundaries because you can go anywhere you wish.
The voice in my stories is sometimes authentic, sometimes it is foreign.
Sometimes it is old. Sometimes it is new. Sometimes my writing is Muslim, other times it is Sikh and many times, it is no one’s religion because as long as I am telling the story,
I am in control.
I am whoever I want to be.

Farzana Hakim, Book Challenge Author
Pen to Print Writer