A-level student wins Orwell Youth Prize with a climate-themed story about Blackpool

An A-Level student won a prestigious national award for political fiction writing with a short story based on the concept of the Fylde Coast going underwater due to climate change.
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The short story, by Cerys Shanks, 17, was praised by judges for being ‘strong on detail and told with love, distaste, and regret.’

They added that it described the town’s ‘gaudy pleasures’, while warning that the coastal resort could one day be lost to the sea.

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Cerys’ story describes ‘humid tours of Madame Tussauds’ and muses that ‘Blackpool’s Sea will finally have its fish- battered and drifting in the drowned wreckage of an old chippy.’

Photo Neil Cross; Cerys Shanks - 17 year old has won the Orwell youth prize for her short story about the impact of climate change on BlackpoolPhoto Neil Cross; Cerys Shanks - 17 year old has won the Orwell youth prize for her short story about the impact of climate change on Blackpool
Photo Neil Cross; Cerys Shanks - 17 year old has won the Orwell youth prize for her short story about the impact of climate change on Blackpool

Cerys, of Park Lane, Preston, said: “My first thought was to write about an island that ends up completely underwater but then I remembered Blackpool. I had a lot of happy memories as before the lockdown we used to visit twice a year.”

The theme for the writing competition was ‘Coming up for air: Writing the climate crisis’.

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The A-Level student wrote the story in April. She found out that she’d won the prestigious youth award in the first week of her summer break from Runshaw College.

And winning was a total surprise.

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She added: “I don't typically share the things I write with other people. Knowing that other people liked my narrative enough to select it for the prize has helped my confidence.”

The young writer became interested in climate change through her older brother, Ryan, who studies geography.

“One day he came home announcing the different areas that would be lost without change over tea, including Blackpool. I hear all the stories on the news. The heatwaves, the fires, and droughts are all signs that it’s pretty late now and our generation has the responsibility to do something.”

Her winning story has been published on the Orwell Foundation website. Her prize also included books by George Orwell, a certificate, cash prize and an invitation to the Orwell Youth Fellows programme.

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Gillian Clarke, a judge for the Orwell Youth Prize, said: “the writer shares sadness and foreboding, regret at childhood lost, and ends with a warning that, like coastal towns everywhere, it will be lost to the sea.”

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