The Orwell Youth Prize 2023: Three Peterborough pupils win praise from award winning writers

Three secondary school students from Peterborough have been selected as Runners Up in The Orwell Youth Prize 2023, with the independent judges lauding their work as “beautiful", “powerful” and “brilliant”.

The Orwell Youth Prize is an annual creative writing competition for 12-18 year olds, inspired by the works of 1984 writer, George Orwell, and his commitment to social justice. The 2023 theme was 'Who's in Control?'

From a field of 570 entries, the judges selected Ruxue Jia, Ellie Lee, and Marianne Lee, all students at schools in Peterborough, as runners up in the Junior Category (school years 8-11).

The judges of The Orwell Youth Prize (OYP) 2023 were Orwell Prize-winning author, Delia Jarrett-Macauley; Financial Times Global Education Editor, Andrew Jack; the BBC’s Disinformation and Social Media Correspondent, Marianna Spring; and Forward Prize-winning poet, Will Harris.

‘Well-executed pieces’

Chair of judges, Delia Jarrett-Macauley, said: “We thoroughly enjoyed reading this year’s submissions for the OYP and were impressed by the range of unusual stories, poems, essays and scripts tackling the theme ‘Who’s in Control’. It was rewarding to discover so many well-executed pieces, and we were impressed by the creativity and original ideas.”

Will Harris said of Ruxue Jia’s piece Why is it so dark? that it is “beautiful, clear-eyed writing about difficult mental states, with a well-executed turn in its argument towards the ending.”

He also commented that Marianne Lee’s bold and vivid poem, Obedience has “a brilliant opening, and lovely sonic and verbal dexterity throughout – I also liked the risks with image and bold line breaks.”

Judge and BBC Correspondent Marianna Spring called Ellie Lee’s poem An Uncontrollable Scribble “a powerful poem that experiments with format and language. It makes you reflect on the mark we all leave on the world, and how much we can control that.”

All three pieces are available to read on The Orwell Foundation website, along with the other winners and runners up.

All the shortlisted writers were invited to the Orwell Youth Prize Celebration Day at University College London on Saturday, 8 July 2023, where they took part in a creative writing workshop with the award-winning writer and poet Anthony Anaxagorou and performed their work, before receiving their prizes, including a copy of George Orwell’s collected essays, and an Orwell Youth Prize goody bag.

The winners and runners up will also be invited to join The Orwell Youth Fellows, a collective of young writers starting conversations and developing new writing that is responsive to our changing world – and supporting other young people to engage with the prize.