Amble student wins national writing award

Lily Tibbitts was awarded first place in Rotary’s Young Writer competition 2021-2022.

The 18-year-old James Calvert Spence College student has been working her way towards the top prize since she first entered in 2017. She won third place last year.

“For me, entering the Rotary competitions helped to build my writing confidence and encouraged me to keep writing, so it was a great feeling to be the national winner this year,” she said.

Lily was also winner of the Year 10+ category of the New Writing North Young Northern Writers’ Awards 2021.

A keen writer from an early age, she has been a member of New Writing North’s Amble Young Writers Group for several years and writes for the Ambler where she chronicled the trials and tribulations of lockdown.

She hopes to pass the baton to James Calvert Spence College’s younger students and this year has been acting as a writing mentor by assisting with the lower school’s Creative Writing club through the in-school volunteering programme.

Lily is due to receive her A-level results this summer before she embarks on the next part of her journey, studying English Literature and Creative Writing at Newcastle University.

Her English teacher, Miss Swallow, said: “It’s been an absolute pleasure teaching Lily – she is a talented writer who has demonstrated real grit and passion to push that talent

forward, her Rotary win is very well deserved.”

Alan Davies, secretary at Amble and Warkworth Rotary Club said: “Everyone at the club is so pleased for Lily, and so very glad that we were able to sponsor her.”