In recent months, Raghav has entered both the Nord Anglia Education Creative Writing Competition and the FOBISIA Short Story Writing Competition, and won both of them.
In the NAE Creative Writing Competition, his age group, 11-14 years old, were asked to write a short story in less than 500 words in a category known as fan-fiction. Fan-fiction is where you take the story or characters (or both) of a piece of work that you like and make your own story. Naturally, Raghav honed in on his favourite author and wrote Young Samurai - The Way of the Oarsman.
“There was a buzz of excitement throughout the Niten Ichi Ryu, the prestigious school for Samurai in Kyoto. Today was the Tenjin Matsuri festival. The trees were bedecked with lanterns. The streets were lined with stalls selling colourful flags, bowls of steaming ramen and pillowy sweets. Jack,the young British sailor, now a Samurai-in-training, was especially excited about that evening's boat race…” Raghav Dwivedi (Year 6) [Full Story]
The school community was overjoyed to hear that, as a result of some strong entries, BIS HCMC had three authors named and published in the NAE Creative Writing and Visual Arts anthology 2017. However, the good news didn’t stop there, as Raghav was also named Junior Writer of the Year for his entire age group. A huge personal achievement, especially when you consider the fact that the competition received 6,500 entries from all over the world.
Following his success in the NAE competition, Raghav also entered the FOBISIA Short Story Competition. The theme of the competition was 'Colours'.
37 schools from across the South East Asia region entered their favourite stories from their students. The initial entries to be judged internally by the hosts elc International School, Sungai Buloh, who had the unenviable job of selecting the top 5 stories for each category. The final decision on who would walk away as the overall winner was to be made by an external judge. A Lighter Shade of Brown, Raghav’s second story, was described by the judge as “the outstanding winner” of the primary section.
To make the victory all that much more wonderful, the external judge in the FOBISIA competition was none other than Chris Bradford, Raghav’s favourite author. Who described A Lighter Shade of Brown as “very mature writing, wonderfully evocative and beautifully told. Both a social commentary and a joyous story of friendship.” He went on to describe Raghav as “A true talent in your midst!”
We are all superbly proud of Raghav’s achievement, and couldn’t agree with Mr Bradford more.
When we asked Raghav about his reaction to winning both awards he said: “I was absolutely shocked as I never expected to win one award let alone both!”
Now in Year 7 at the Secondary Campus, Raghav has once again entered the FOBISIA Short Story Competition 2018. It will come as no surprise that this talented young writer was crowned winner for a second time but this time for the Secondary category with his story entitled 'A Pair of Grey-Brown Eyes’. This is an outstanding achievement as Raghav was up against students from Years 7 - 13 making him one of the youngest entrants in his category.
