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The Pen to Print Awards 2026

The 2026 Pen to Print writing competition winners were announced on Thursday 23 July 2026 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 by our partner Alternative Stories and we will make that available on our Write On! Audio podcast when it is ready.

The Book Challenger authors will each have their novel published and will be gifted free copies of their book once published, so they are all winners!

 

And the winners are …
View All Book Challenge Books View All Book Challenge Books

The Book Challenge 2025/26

Winner

Ruth Frendo with Elderwood

Listen to an Extract from Elderwood

 

Second

Lee James Broadwood with The Fisherman’s Daughter

Third

Yana Yanovic with The Revenge Pack

Highly Commended

Gulnaz Aybenk with Misery Loves Company

Nick Burdett with Vigilantes Anonymous

 

Pen to Print Speech and Drama Festival 2026

Overall Winner
(Decided by an audience vote)

Zafyra Slack-Robins with My explanation for the missing digestive biscuits!

Poetry Winner

Sansa Burke with What’s So Good About Summer

Monologue Winner

Zafyra Slack-Robins with My explanation for the missing digestive biscuits!

 

The Michael Feld Writing Competition for Young People 2026

Winner for Key Stage 2 and Overall Winner
(Young people in Primary School Years 2 to 6).

Hishaam Hussain with The Gloomy Forest

 

 

The Pen to Print Short Story Competition 2026

Winner

Lesley Anne Armour with A New Chapter

Listen to A New Chapter

 

Second

Elena Demireva with Hunger

Third

Sulaiman Othman with The Calf

Highly Commended

Benjamin Doeteh with The Last Bookstore on Earth

 

The Pen to Print Poetry Competition 2026

Winner

Palak Tewary with The Shape Of Delay

Listen to The Shape Of Delay

 

Second

Bella Rosalie Guy with Split Silence

Third

Mike Lansdown with Adrift

 

The Pen to Print Audio Play Competition 2026 in Association with Alternative Stories

Winner

Alex White with Greys

 Listen to an extract from Greys

 

 

 

The Pen to Print Barking and Dagenham Staff Competition 2026

Winner

Jenny Lee with I Didn’t Know

Listen to I Didn’t Know

 

Second

Helena Jackson with Ode to Recycling

Third

Rahat Ismail with A Poem About A Woman

Commended

Nazia Akhatar-Hussain with Love Poem

Caterina Ionescu with Oksana

Daniela Kalveri with To Understand My Teenagers!

Oyin Oyeniyi with Arise!

Prativa Tuladhar with Courage to Care

Sonia Sim with Humm…Is This OK?

 

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