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Every March, we host Oundle KidLit, a special week of author events for primary school children. Timed to coincide with World Book Day, we collaborate with local primary schools to offer children a range of fun events to foster an early love of literacy and books. If your school is taking part, you will receive details directly from them. Local home-schooled children can also attend - email us for tickets. We also run the free-to-enter Oundle KidLit Writing Competition - details below.
Oundle KidLit 2027 - Monday 1st - Friday 5th March
Line up announcements coming soon
Local primary schools will be sent booking details during autumn term 2026
Oundle KidLit Writing Competition 2026
- the winners announcement!!
We received many fabulous stories and poems for our annual Oundle KidLit Writing Competition around a theme of 'Time Travel'. You met dancing aliens on Mars, followed twisting tunnels to future cities, and met evil alter-egos who turned out to be not so bad in the end! You went back in time to learn dance moves from Michael Jackson and helped put out the Great Fire of London with Samuel Pepys. You played hide and seek with a young Princess Elizabeth and also met her in the year that she became Queen Elizabeth II, when she helped you fix your broken time machine. You wanted to meet cavemen and dinosaurs, Greek heroes, King Arthur, and Julius Caesar; to warn the captain of the Titanic and the soldiers who would fight in the two world wars; and to check the future for robots and AI. You rescued a baby snow leopard from a future cloud city and saw robots and flying cars from a magic cave. It's fair to say, you made judging very difficult for us, and we loved reading every one of your entries. Congratulations to each and every one of you who entered - keep on reading widely and writing as much as possible!
Watch the full Winners Announcement video below.
Some of the feedback from our previous winners:
'C was so pleased when she watched the video this evening and found out she was a runner up! She was talking about story ideas before bed so can’t wait to see what she creates next! We are so fortunate to have Oundle Festival of Literature and all of the volunteers who make it all happen. Many thanks, H.'
'M is delighted, thank you!'
'Oh my goodness this has made my day, R will be ecstatic!! Thank you 😊H'
'Thank you all for running this competition. Young C will be so happy. Kind Regards S'
Some of the feedback from our previous winners:
'I just wanted to say thank you so much for the lovely prize bag that you sent for X. He was absolutely thrilled to win a prize. X has had quite a tough few months, because he had to have surgery. After the surgery he wasn’t able to run, jump, swim, do PE etc for a while and he found that really hard. Writing and typing up the poem gave him something creative and positive to focus on. The surgery and everything around it definitely knocked his confidence a bit, but winning the prize for his poem has given him a huge boost and we’re so grateful for that. So thank you very much once again. Very best.'
Special thanks to award children's books for supplying books as prizes, to Steven Vinacour for writing the competition prompts and to Oundle Library for promoting the competition.
Check out some of the amazing past authors who have appeared at Oundle KidLit
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Ross Welford - 2026
Award-winning author, Ross Welford entertained packed sessions with stories and magic. Time Travelling With A Hamster was his first book, and was nominated for every major award in children's books, winning the Awesome Book Award in 2017. A new, standalone book has followed every year since, cementing Ross as one of the UK's most popular and original voices in children's books.
Teresa Heapy - 2026
Teresa Heapy writes captivating and atmospheric stories for children. She showed us her ideas notebook and explained that each story takes a few tries to get right. Her latest book features a fox and a wolf who don’t get along, but have to survive a big storm together. We drew our own characters using Kate Read’s prompt, and the result was a whole menagerie of wonderful animals to write about.
Hannah Peck - 2026
Hannah Peck is the author and illustrator of joyful adventures for children, such as the much-loved Kate on the Case series, shortlisted for the V&A Illustration Awards and the Alligator’s Mouth Award. She showed us how to take inspiration from things around us when coming up with ideas for our stories and drawings - and then the children came up with creative ideas to produce amazing character drawings
Jordan Glover - 2026
Author Jordan co-authored ‘The Wonder Team’ series about footballing time-travellers with her pro footballer cousin, Leah Williamson, who captains England's Lionesses. Jordan got us to think about giving our characters problems to solve in our stories, and about who inspires us. She and Leah were inspired by one of the first women’s football teams, the Dick, Kerr ladies, during World War I.
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Steven Vinacour - 2026
Engaging and educational toilet humour was the name of the game as author Steven Vinacour had us laughing and learning at the same time. He helped us understand how to structure our writing better, and entertained us with a reading from one of his ‘Ted and the Time-Travelling Toilet’ series of books.
Steven also kindly set the story and poem starter prompts for the Oundle KidLit 2026 ‘Time Travel’-themed Writing Competition this year
Jude Simpson - Summer 2025
We were wowed by the wonderfully witty wordplay of Jude Simpson, with interactive poems and songs about noises, from the annoying to the joyful to the decidedly unusual! Jude’s warmth and contagious joy entertained us all and she kindly donated a copy of her poetry book, 'A Noise Annoys' to Oundle Library.
Catherine Jacobs - 2025
An award winning journalist and reporter on Channel 5 news, a previous environment correspondent at Sky and now a successful children's author penning exciting rhymes with an eco-theme for early readers.
Terrie Chilvers - 2025
A copywriter and social media consultant from London with a penchant for sausage dogs and eggs benedict. Her book, Michael -The Amazing Mind Reading Sausage Dog was selected for the Blue Peter Book Club.
Lissa Evans - 2025
Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, the Costa Book Awards, the UK Literacy Award and the Branford Boase Award. The Bookseller made 'Wished its Editor's Choice, saying: ‘A superbly funny misadventure about unexpected friendships and living life to the full.’
Clare Harlow - 2025
Tidemagic was named Blackwell's Children's Book of the Month in May '24. Once upon a time, Clare was an actor, touring theatres all over the UK and Ireland, until she turned her love of storytelling from stage to page and became a writer, too. She lives in London, where she spends a lot of time walking by the river in the hope that a little Tidemagic might rub off on her.
Jack Meggitt-Phillips - 2025
An author, scriptwriter and playwright whose work has been performed at The Roundhouse and featured on Radio 4. Jack’s first Beast book, The Beast and the Bethany, has won over seven awards, been translated into 32 languages and a film version is in production with Warner Brothers and Harry Potter producer David Heyman.
LD Lapinski - 2024
LD, author of titles 'Artisans: The Forgotten Magic', 'Jamie' and popular series 'The Strangeworlds Travel Agency', had us using all of our senses to create magical worlds of our own, and persuaded us that being an author is one of the best jobs in the world, because you can stay in your pyjamas all day while you write!
Jenny Pearson - 2024
Quizzes, record attempts, adventure stories, and fun galore - Jenny Pearson's second visit to Oundle was another triumph! What a treat on World Book Day - thank you, Jenny!
Timothy Knapman - 2024
Timothy wowed us with his fantastic storytelling - rebel princesses, cool owls, a famous picture gone missing, and a digestively-challenged numbat! Adults and children alike had great fun!
David Barrow - 2024
David Barrow inspired our next generation of illustrators at KidLit 2024. We became expert elephant and dinosaur spotters, and also created our own animal characters, thinking about their emotions and back story. Very interactive and great fun!
Sam Sedgeman -2024
Weird and wonderful facts, experiments - Sam educated and entertained us at the same time! If you love stories with a great spoonful of adventure, a big dollop of mystery, and all sorts of fascinating gems of information mixed in, get a Sam Sedgman book!
Iona Rangeley 2023
Iona Rangeley introduced us to Einstein The Penguin. An excited audience listened to Iona read extracts from books she wrote as a 5-year-old, as well as exclusive readings from her debut series. We all enjoyed testing our penguin knowledge with a fun penguin quiz
Joshua Seigal -2023
Local schools joined internationally renowned performance poet Joshua for a fantastic session of uproarious, interactive poetry.
Francis Durkin - 2023
Historian and author of the award-winning Histronauts book series, invited her young audience to engage with the history of ancient Greece through storytelling, fun facts and activities. A great time was had by all.
Hannah Gold - 2023
Hannah Gold told her audience all about her best-selling book, The Last Bear. This highly interactive, inspiring session was perfect for animal lovers and shows no-one is too young or insignificant to make a difference. An amazing book with an environmental message.
Abi Elphinstone - 2016
Abi Elphinstone wows in Oundle, Kid Lit 2016.
Abi gives a dramatic talk about her debut children's book, The Dream Snatcher. Abi has gone on to become a bestselling children's author.