We were delighted to support this year’s Write on Norfolk competition and donate book tokens as prizes when the winners were announced at the Children’s Library at The Forum on the 5 October.

More than 200 entries were submitted for this year’s Write On Norfolk contest, which is run by Norfolk County Council and BBC Radio Norfolk. Poems, short stories and scripts from children across dozens of schools were entered over three months, with all of them bearing a link to Nelson’s county.

The panel of judges, including Chris Rushby from the Jarrold Book Department, had the tricky job of whittling down the entries, but picked a top nine, who, on Thursday, were given gold, silver and bronze medals at a ceremony hosted by judge and Radio Norfolk presenter Nick Conrad. Stuart Dark, vice-chairman of the council’s children’s services committee, told Radio Norfolk that education on reading and writing was “absolutely fundamental”.

The contest is in its second year and is part of the council’s wider Raising Learners campaign, which also includes Count On Norfolk, a similar initiative aiming to boost primary school children’s numeracy skills.

The competition has been supported by Jarrold of Norwich, who donated book tokens as prizes. The gold winners also won an Amazon Fire tablet. This year’s judging panel was made up of Alison Thomas, deputy leader of the council, Chris Rushby, book buyer at Jarrold, authors Cressida McLaughlin and Kevin Price and Mr Conrad. Mrs McLaughlin, whose book The Canal Boat Café has sold more than 100,000 copies and who published.

The judges selected the winning entries from over two hundred submitted and were really impressed with the quality of the short-listed entries and winners. The task was to write up to 500 words on any topic as long as it referred to Norfolk.

The three top-placed entries in each age category received Jarrold gift vouchers to spend in Jarrold’s book department.

For full details of the winners and to read the winning entries click here