The Blacktown Mayoral Creative Writing Prize 2020 was open to adults and children who live in Blacktown city. Entrants wrote a short story or poem responding to the theme of The Whole World at Home. The total prize pool was $1,600.

In 2020 we received a total of 363 entries across all the categories with 50 schools participating in the competition. The works were judged on originality, the construction of the story or poem, the use of language, (including creative expression, grammar, sentence structure, punctuation and spelling) and the way characters, atmosphere or setting was developed, or used words in a creative way.

Congratulations to the winners and the commended writers, and thank you to everyone who contributed. It takes real courage to hand your words and ideas over to strangers to… well, judge. But it’s also something of a thrill. So if you are reading this and wishing you’d had the courage to enter, we’ll be back in 2021.

Below, in the electronic version of the book you will find the list of winners and highly commended along with all their stories and poems. Read them. Be inspired and enjoy!

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