My Writing Journey Competition

After 15 years of running the My Writing Journey Competition, we’ve made the difficult decision to bring it to a close.

In recent rounds, over 90% of submissions were entirely generated by AI. Whether they arrived from India, Brazil or Timbuktu, the entries were nearly identical in content and voice, and devoid of the spark, originality and soul that has defined this competition for so many years.

Moreover, judging AI-generated work proved to be a disheartening task. Our brilliant judges, who have given their time, care and expertise, deserve more than that. While AI is adept at correcting grammar and punctuation, it cannot write your life story for you.

And so, it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to one of the sweetest writing competitions, one that has drawn many thousands of unique, deeply human stories since 2010 from every corner of the globe.

On a brighter note, we’ve been hard at work compiling a new anthology of award-winning essays – our gift to you, in celebration of 20 years of nurturing global writing talent.

You can download the existing free anthology of winning entries at the bottom of this page. Please return here by 15 August to download the new anthology of essays.