Freya Gray Stone in the Upper Sixth recently gained Full Colours for Creative Writing. This is the first time Colours have been awarded for Creative Writing, a precedent necessitated by Freya’s extraordinary achievements during the two years of her Creative Writing A level course.
Freya gained third place in the Prose Fiction category of the 2016 Lancaster Writing Awards, a national competition run in association with Cake Magazine and The Flash Journal Lancaster (both published in collaboration with the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Lancaster). Then, she was one of the 85 commended poets in this year’s Foyle Young Poet of the Year Award, run by The Poetry Society. As well as attending the presentation of awards in London, Freya was invited to a week-long Arvon Foundation writing course at Ted Hughes’s former home, Lumb Bank, in Yorkshire. The course, taught by W N Herbert was for only fifteen of the 85 commended poets, suggesting that Freya was very confidently placed among the top rank of this year’s emerging talent. Now we learn that Freya has received a Commendation, which includes a £250 cash prize, in this year’s Christopher Tower Poetry Competition. Co-ordinated by Christ Church College, Oxford, the prize is the most prestigious poetry award (with the most generous prize fund) for young writers in the UK. Poetry is Freya’s preferred form, but her versatility is demonstrated by her success with prose fiction, and also by the fact that she won last year’s House Drama competition for best script.
