It is with great pleasure that the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing announces the winners of this year’s UEA Young Writer Award! A global hub of creativity and writing, UEA introduced the Young Writer Award in 2025 to encourage and recognise young writing talent across South-East Asia.
This year, entrants were invited to write about something that is as timely as it is elusive in our world of deepfakes and AI hallucinations: authenticity.
The judges were delighted and deeply impressed by the 133 entries that we received from across the region. They reflected a wonderfully varied range of approaches to unpacking the notion of authenticity, both in creative and in critical ways. Across the stories, essays, poems, and creative non-fiction that we received, the judges were thrilled to discover genuinely thoughtful and original ways of reflecting on the meaning and place of authenticity in our time. Our three winners and seven highly-commended writers were especially successful in embracing this idea, but we want to thank all of our entrants for sharing their writing with us.
The winners of this year’s competition are:
🥇 First Place
Lokesh Thinagar: ‘The Grammar of Home’ (Brunei)
🥈 Second Place
Keythlin Zheng: ‘A Very Accurate Auto-Biography’ (Indonesia)
🥉 Third Place
Lakshawathey Prakash: ‘Two-Face Authentication’ (Malaysia)
🎖️ Highly Commended Writers
Anne Lavelle Ng: ‘Authenticity’ (Malaysia)
Anushka Anantharajan: ‘Aligned’ (Brunei)
Darryl Choong: ‘The Stage Is Yours!’ (Malaysia)
Jasmin Unsworth: ‘The Girl Disney Never Drew’ (Malaysia)
Joanna Firdauzi: ‘AuthenticTM’ (Indonesia)
Oluwajumilo Adekoya: ‘Not Me But Me For You’ (Brunei)
Tarini Sehgal: ‘The Algorithmic Self’ (Malaysia)
You can read their pieces here on newwriting.net.
Warmest congratulations to all!
