National writing prize

Freyde Sayers (Y13) has recently been awarded second prize in a national story writing competition run by The Jewish News newspaper.

Freyde said ‘I came across the competition when I was looking for an opportunity to use my short-story writing skills. I love short stories and poems because they are able to capture something broad in a few words, which I think is quite special.’

The competition task was to describe a time when “someone has worked hard to achieve their goal” and “persisted”.

‘I decided to write about a time when I was about 7 or 8 years old, and was jealous of adult writers who were able to write stories about children when I thought that children could be just as capable of doing the same thing! Back then I spent a lot of my weekends and holidays writing and illustrating my own stories. They were very clichĂ©d but I enjoyed it so much because I was doing something that I thought belonged to adults. I drew pictures to accompany the stories with pastel colours and made a bit of a mess but it was fun.’

Freyde is pictured receiving her prize from the author and competition judge Miriam Halahmy.