This year’s competition now open!
If you are aged between 11 and 19 and interested in history and writing, the YWSP is ready to take you on an adventure. We are the UK’s only creative writing prize specifically for budding historical fiction writers. You could win a £500 travel grant, tickets to one of the UK’s best book festivals, and the chance to see your own work in print in a special anthology. Stories must be between 800 and 2,000 words, and set in a time before you were born. This year’s competition has just opened, so go to our How To Enter page for more details, and make a note of the closing date – 31st October 2025.
This year’s winners announced!
The fourteen winners, runners-up and highly commended young writers from this year’s competition have been announced – congratulations, Katherine White (winner 11-15 years category) and Sophie Berry (winner 16-19 years category), and the twelve other young writers who wowed the judges with their stories. You can read all about them and download their stories here. To see the names and story title of the 28 young writers who made the Shortlist, announced in February, click here.
YWSP Timeline
31 October 2024: 2024 YWSP closed for entries – judging begins
17 February 2025: YWSP shortlist announced on our website
19 March 2025: YWSP category winners and runners-up announced and 2025 competition opened
12 June 2025: 2024 category winners presented at Borders Book Festival
31 October 2025: Closing date for 2025 competition
Tips for young writers and other writing competitions
Don’t forget to check out our amazing video archive of writing advice and tips from a host of well-known published historical fiction writers as well as previous winners of the YWSP. Authors including Maggie O’Farrell, Hilary Mantel, Colm Toibin and Joseph O’Connor can be seen dispensing nuggets of wisdom in this playlist here!
And we know how popular our guide to other writing competitions is, so we have updated it especially for you. Once you’ve entered the Young Walter Scott Prize, you can find a wealth of other competitions for young writers here.