03 August 2026

Our new writing competition is live!

Photo of someone writing the line 'The animal that changed my life.'

Would you like a chance to have the incredible Dame Jacqueline Wilson read your story? Enter our writing competition today…

NEW FOR 2026

The one and only Dame Jacqueline Wilson, author of more than 100 books including the Tracy Beaker series, the Magic Faraway Tree: A New Adventure, and The Primrose Railway Children, will be this year’s judge for our writing competition for 2026!

We’re delighted to join our friends at the University of East Anglia (UEA) once again to bring you this fantastic competition alongside, for the first time this year, The Pony Club!

It’s open to everyone and you can win some fantastic prizes! We’ve even added two extra categories to make sure adults can get involved this time around too – you asked, so we wanted to make it happen!

Please read our instructions carefully to make sure your entry will be counted.

A photo of the Redwings edition of Black Beauty on hay

Win a copy of the Redwings edition of Black Beauty!

Guidelines

Write a story or a poem, within the word count of your age category, around the theme ‘The Animal That Changed My Life’.

Whether you write something based on a true story or you want to let your imagination run wild, we’re very excited to read your creations. Please note this competition is open to UK residents only.

By entering our competition, you have a chance to win these fantastic prizes:
A copy of the special Redwings edition of Black Beauty (complete with foreword from Dame Jacqueline!)
A year’s adoption of a horse or donkey of your choice from Redwings
Fab merchandise from the UEA
A Pony Club merchandise bundle
And the chance to see an extract of your writing published in Young Reds Magazine and on the Redwings website!

Two runners-up in each category will also receive a copy of the special Redwings edition of Black Beauty.

There will be four age categories:

Ages 6–11 (Maximum 500 words)
Ages 12–18 (Maximum 750 words)
19-24 (Maximum 750 words)
25 + (Maximum 750 words)

Competition closes Wednesday 30th September 2026.

Our judging panel consists of a team member from Redwings Horse Sanctuary, UEA and The Pony Club. They will create a shortlist from each age category so our celebrity guest judge Dame Jacqueline Wilson, who wrote a special foreword for Redwings and the UEA’s special fundraising edition of Black Beauty, can then crown our winner and runners up by the end of November.

Good luck and have fun!

Win a year's adoption of a horse or donkey of your choice from Redwings - such as beautiful Callisto!

How to enter: Email your typed-up piece of writing to stories@redwings.co.uk. Make sure you include your name and age, so you’re entered into the correct age category, as well as your contact details so we can let you know if you've won!

Participants under 16 must have a parent or guardians’ permission to enter and provide us with the relevant personal details. Your details will be held for the purpose of this competition only and then removed. We will not share your data unnecessarily or with any third parties. You can read the full Redwings privacy notice here - Privacy and cookies | Redwings Horse Sanctuary.

If you have any questions about the competition, please get in touch with Redwings – stories@redwings.co.uk.

Prompts

This competition is once again inspired by the well-known classic Black Beauty. Beauty’s character does many jobs and heroic acts to help the humans around him. The story itself had an incredible impact on the treatment of animals in the real world, driving change in how we see and treat our horses. And did you know that the author of Black Beauty, Anna Sewell, relied on a horse and cart to get around after she sadly had an accident as a child? (You can find out more about Anna’s life in our animation - The story of Anna Sewell and Black Beauty voiced by Dame Joanna Lumley.) As you can see there are many examples in the book that show how an animal can change someone’s life.

So, can you write from experience like Anna? Have you (or anyone you know) had an encounter with an animal that changed your/their life that you can write about? In what way did it change it?

Does your experience take place in the real world or a fantasy world you’ve created?

Are you writing from the perspective of an animal or a human? Think about what descriptive words you’d need to describe your characters. Do you need to do some research about your featured animal to help you or is it a made-up creature?

Hints and tips: Create a word cloud/vision board of the animals/creatures you’d like to include in your story; Include pictures, images, drawings, descriptive words and phrases that you can come back to.

When you are imagining your chosen animal, spend 5 minutes thinking about all 5 senses. What can the animal see? What can they hear? Smell? Taste? And what can they feel? This will help you gather lots of details for your writing.