2025 Young Writers’ Competition winners announced!

Thank you to all who entered the 2025 Northern Beaches Young Writers’ Competition. We received and read hundreds of incredible creative pieces, giving our author judges a very difficult task this year.

Please join us in congratulating this year’s winners:

Kindergarten - Year 2, judged by author Debra Tidball
Winner: Mia Bennett for The Nervous Ice-Cream
Runner Up: Christopher Bai for Diary of a Chick
Highly Commended: Josh Asigno for Sam and the Snowy Portal Adventure
Highly Commended: Joey Shen for Invasion    

Years 3 – 4, judged by author Nick Long
Winner: Georgia Greenwell for The Drop of Life
Runner Up: Rose Hastie for Emeralds and Diamonds
Highly Commended: Laura Holden for 2 Homes
Highly Commended: Mia Jones for Stella and Scales

Years 5 - 6, judged by author Nat Amore
Winner: Maya Gaffney by Are You Listening?
Runner Up: Emma Kate Cooper for Crumpet’s Little Story
Highly Commended: Abigail McCabe for The Destination
Highly Commended: Kiana O’Farrell for The Clockmaker’s Change

Years 7 – 8, judged by author Yvette Poshoglian
Winner: Moana Chujo for Silent Strings
Runner Up: Jeana Shen for The Currency of Memory
Highly Commended: Eugene Lin for Memories of the Sand
Highly Commended: Evelyn Christopher for Elsie

Years 9 - 10, judged by author Pip Harry
Winner: Alice Surace for The Tides of Change
Runner Up: Zoe Mason for Typing…
Highly Commended: Noah Gonçalves Ferreira for Moonlight Beneath the Sun
Highly Commended: Lok Tin Samuel Shen for Procedural

Years 11 – 12, judged by author Harry Cook
Winner: Maya Reed for Nine Years
Runner Up: Xenia Beck for Just a Notebook
Highly Commended: Annika Mills for Fragments of a Fractured Mind
Highly Commended: Rosanna Robertson for Route 835

All 24 finalists’ stories feature in the 2025 Young Writers’ Competition eBook ‘Change’, available to download.

We had entrants from over 70 schools, with finalists this year from: 

Covenant Christan School, Killarney Heights Public School, Killarney Heights High School, Manly Village Public School, Mimosa Public School, Mona Vale Public School, Narrabeen Sports High School, Northern Beaches Secondary College Mackellar Campus, Northern Beaches Secondary College Manly Campus, Oxford Falls Grammar, Pittwater High School, Scots College, Seaforth Public School, St Luke's Grammar School, Stella Maris College, The Forest High School and Wenona School.

Meet our author judges

Debra Tidball, Category Kindergarten - Year 2: Debra Tidball is an award-winning author of picture books, short stories, poems and plays for children. With social work and children’s literature qualifications, Debra is a children’s book enthusiast with a particular passion for picture books and the profound way they can touch children’s lives. She is often distracted from her bookish activities by a very cheeky Italian Greyhound named Casper, who, like Little Dragon in her latest picture book, loves making mischief with toilet paper rolls!

Nick Long, Category Year 3 - 4: Author, journalist, and television producer Nick Long has been up close and personal with deadly snakes, five-metre crocodiles, ruthless crime lords and unstable Alaskan glaciers. Believing that every adventure is a chance to expand the imagination, Nick’s junior fiction series The Forbidden Journal of Rufus Rumble takes readers on a hilarious and captivating journey through space. The Forbidden Journal of Rufus Rumble: Worst Space Crew Ever is Nick’s first children’s book, with the sequel set to hit the shelves in July 2025.

Nat Amoore, Category Year 5 - 6: Nat Amoore is an award-winning internationally published author of children's books - a good chunk of which have been written in our very own Northern Beaches Libraries! Her books include Secrets of a Schoolyard Millionaire, The Power of Positive Pranking, The Right Way to Rock, Graphic Novel We Run Tomorrow and the Shower Land series. Nat is passionate about encouraging kids to read, write and explore their imaginations without boundaries.

Yvette Poshoglian, Category Year 7 - 8: Bestselling author of over 50 books for children and young readers, Yvette writes the wildly popular Ella and Olivia series, the Puppy Diary books and the Frankie Fox Girl Spy stories, and has written historical fiction including My Australian Story: Escape from Cockatoo Island. Her new book Dear Greta is out now.

Pip Harry, Category Year 9 - 10: Award-winning author of children and young adults, Pip's titles include Because of You, The Little Wave, Are You There, Buddha? and August & Jones. Her verse novel The Little Wave won the 2020 CBCA Book of the Year for Younger Readers, and the Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Award (8-10 years). Her newest middle grade book, August & Jones, won the CBCA Shadow Judging Book of the Year 2023. Pip’s debut picture book Over or Under? is shortlisted for the ABIA Picture Book of the Year and is a CBCA Early Childhood Notable book. The Inside Dog, Drift, and Camp Spooky: Attack of the Aliants are all out in 2025. Pip is proud to call the Northern Beaches home and is a regular visitor to the local libraries to research, read and write.

Harry Cook, Category Year 11 - 12: Harry Cook is a Northern Beaches local, an award-winning film, television, and theatre actor, writer, and LGBTQI+ activist. His writing credits includes his memoir, Pink Ink, two YA novels, Fin & Rye & Fireflies and Felix Silver, Teaspoons & Witches, and contributions to The Huffington Post, The Big Smoke, and The Guardian. He has starred in major film, TV and theatre productions, including working alongside such talents as Geena Davis and Sam Neill.

About the Young Writers' Competition

2025 marks the sixteenth year of the Young Writers' Competition.

Open to students from Kindergarten to Year 12 who live or go to school on the Northern Beaches, the competition invites students to write an original work of creative writing using a special hero word. This year's hero word is 'Change'.

Entries are judged according to characterisation, plot, originality, and use of language and arranged into six different age group categories with four finalists in each category.

For further enquiries about the Young Writers' Competition, please contact writers.comp@northernbeaches.nsw.gov.au

Flip through the eBook or download: