Barkerend pupil Kamil Qasim was thrilled to meet HRH the Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla Parker Bowles, at an awards ceremony held at the Brontë Parsonage Museum this February.

The Brontë Society’s ‘Writing Worlds’ competition invited children to take inspiration from the imaginary worlds created by the Brontë siblings when they were young, and produce a piece of writing about their own spaces – physical or imaginary. Kamil came 2nd in the Year 3 & 4 category after being shortlisted from scores of entries.

HRH the Duchess of Cornwall, who is passionate about promoting literacy, was visiting the museum at the time of the awards ceremony in Haworth’s Old School Room and took some time to meet with the children and encourage them to pursue their love of creative writing.

The winners and runners-up were invited to read their entries, before receiving their prize from Young Adult fiction author Liz Flanagan, who judged the competition.

Liz said,

“It was a real pleasure to read all the stories and poems entered into the writing competition and to see how varied they were.

 

“The children have wonderful imaginations, and their writing was very vivid: from football matches to alien worlds, from talking wolves to mysterious visitors from the future!

 

“It was great to meet the writers in person, too. I loved chatting to them on the day of the award-ceremony. I feel quite sure that these could be the authors of the future, if they work hard and keep writing and reading – following in the footsteps of the Brontës.”

Winners received a certificate, a book token and a bookmark, and the schools attended by the winning students also received book tokens worth £100.