![\"Shana](\"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Shana-and-Amy-300x252.jpg\")
Two of our Year 9 students with a passion for literature have won a prestigious writing award.<\/p>\nTwo of our Year 9 students with a passion for literature have won a prestigious writing award.<\/p>\n
For their poem \u201cThe Competencies of Rage\u201d, Amy Langdown and Shana Nichols were chosen ahead of 600 other talented young writers from across the North.<\/p>\n
The Matthew Hale Award is presented in memory of a promising North East writer who tragically died young. It aims to help talented young people fulfil their potential.\u00a0 One of the judges, Matthew\u2019s father, described Amy and Shana as \u201cexceptional candidates\u201d.<\/p>\n
They received their award during the biggest-ever Northern Writers\u2019 Awards.\u00a0 It was established in 2000 by New Writing North and has become the UK\u2019s premiere talent development programme for both adult and young writers.<\/p>\n
They are the youngest recipients of the Matthew Hale Award and met his parents Spike and Jeanne during the ceremony at Newcastle University\u2019s Great Hall.<\/p>\n
Mr Hale said: \u201cAmy and Shana were selected because of the vibrancy and power of their collective writing. They have a unique and strong minded view of the world and seek to reflect and challenge this through their writing.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cThey are both young people for whom further access to the Arts and further funding would make a significant difference to their ability to develop as writers and this, combined with their gift for expression through writing, made them exceptional candidates for the award.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here at Cramlington Learning Village they were known to be extremely keen readers and were encouraged by their school librarian to attend the town\u2019s Cuckoo Young Writers group, where they composed their winning poem.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe poem was entered. We didn\u2019t know anything about it. We then had an e-mail saying we\u2019d won,\u201d said Amy. \u201cBut when we went to the awards with our parents we had no idea how fancy it really was and we were the only people who had to perform their work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Head teacher Wendy Heslop said: \u201cThey are the best ambassadors imaginable to show the joy literature can provide.\u00a0 They are so enthusiastic \u2013 as well as very creative and talented \u2013 and we are all extremely proud of their amazing achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amy and Shana say their influences are J K Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson, Suzanne Collins \u2013 writer of The Hunger Games \u2013 Roald Dahl and Shakespeare.<\/p>\n
Despite high praise from the judges and their success, which saw them each win \u00a3250, they currently have no plans to become full-time writers.\u00a0 Amy hopes to be a teacher and Shana wants to be a journalist based in mainland Europe. \u201cI\u2019ve always enjoyed writing and I also love languages and finding out about different cultures. When I came to this school I realised that I could combine both,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
They are, however, big fans of musical theatre \u2013 so it might be best not to rule out another successful writing team in the best traditions of Lloyd-Webber and Rice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two of our Year 9 students with a passion for literature have won a prestigious writing award. For their poem \u201cThe Competencies of Rage\u201d, Amy Langdown and Shana Nichols were chosen ahead of 600 other talented young writers from across the North. The Matthew Hale Award is presented in memory of a promising North East… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[187,178,188,189],"class_list":["post-3920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-achievements","tag-award","tag-clv","tag-poetry","tag-writing"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-05 01:23:55","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3920"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6517,"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3920\/revisions\/6517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}