Building on the continued success of the second competition held 2020 / 2021, the Abergavenny Writing Festival is excited to invite young writers from Monmouthshire to send in entries for the third Youth Writing Competition.

To tie in with the festival’s theme for 2022 of ‘Transformation’ young writers (from Year 3 up to Year 13) are asked to write about: “What would you transform if you could.”

Entries in any written form are welcome – up to 300 words – poetry, an article, a story, a speech . . .

Prize winners will be invited to take part in a mentoring workshop with some of Wales’s most exciting and inspiring writing talent: Children’s Laureate of Wales Connor Allen, prizewinning poet Jonathan Edwards and artist, poet, rapper, singer-songwriter and theatre maker Rufus Mufasa.

Connor Allen is the newly appointed Children’s Laureate of Wales.

He’s a multidisciplinary artist who graduated from Trinity Saint David as an Actor in 2013. A member of National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and winner of Triforce’s Cardiff MonologueSlam, representing Wales at the London winners edition. As a writer he was a member of the BBC Wales Welsh Voices and The Welsh Royal Court/NTW writing groups and has written for BBC Wales, BBC Radio 4, Sherman Theatre, Literature Wales and Dirty Protest.

Jonathan Edwards’s first collection, My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren, 2014), received the Costa Poetry Award and the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award. It was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His second collection, Gen (Seren, 2018), also received the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award, and in 2019 his poem about Newport Bridge was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. He lives in Crosskeys, South Wales.

Rufus Mufasa is a pioneering participatory artist, poet, rapper, singer-songwriter and theatre maker. From Barbican Fellow to the first Future Generations Act Poet in Residence, Rufus also works internationally, securing literary residencies from Hay Literature Festival to Sweden, Finland, Indonesia and Zimbabwe. Recently signed to Winger Records, her second album Trigger Warnings drops this year, a direct follow on from her critically acclaimed debut poetry collection Flashbacks and Flowers, published by Indigo Dreams.

Winners will be announced by 25th March 2022 with the presentation of awards and mentoring sessions to take place during the Abergavenny Writing Festival on Saturday April 9th at the Melville Centre for the Arts in Abergavenny. It’s free to enter and entries can be in English or in Welsh. This is a digital competition, with all entries submitted online to: [email protected] The deadline for entries is Monday 28th February.

The Abergavenny Writing Festival will take place between April 7-9 at the Kings Arms Hotel, The Melville Centre for the Arts and other venues in Abergavenny. The event is supported by Arts Council Wales, Abergavenny Town Council, Christie Residential and Abergavenny Rotary Club. For further information visit www.abergavennywritingfestival.com