Cheshire Prize for Literature
Cheshire Prize for Literature 2024/25
The winners of the Cheshire Prize for Literature were announced at the awards ceremony on July 3.
Winners were:
- Primary poetry category: Joe Szestak for When…
- Primary short story category: Melissa Pei for The Day the Puppets Marched
- Secondary poetry category: Belle Hargreaves for The Paper Swan
- Secondary short story category: Aurora Blue for The Strangers
- Flash Fiction: Peter Evans for Get a Grip
- Adult Poetry: Helen Kay for I think of Sid and John Often
- Adult Short Story: Donna Brown for Her Face is Mine
- Children’s Literature: Lesley McClaren for The Story House
- Scriptwrting: John Alexander Fraser The Fates
Congratulations to all our winners. The next competition will launch in November and details will be posted here. Any queries about the competition should be emailed to cheshireprize@chester.ac.uk or phone 01244 511344.
History of the Prize
In 2003, the then High Sheriff of Cheshire approached the University of Chester to establish and run a Cheshire Prize for Literature. Since then, it has grown to become one of the foremost competitions in the area, encouraging the literary talents of new and existing writers.
Until 2018 year it was operating on a triennial cycle of short stories, poetry and children’s literature, and the prize was open to adults with a connection to Cheshire. It is one of the few free-to-enter literary competitions and offers a cash prize for the winners but also the opportunity for the best entries from the previous year to be published by the University of Chester Press in an anthology.
In 2019 we worked with Sir Phil Redmond to introduce a scriptwriting prize. In 2020 we introduced categories for children as we wanted to encourage creative writing in all ages. In this year’s competition there are four categories, short stories, poetry, children's literature and scriptwriting.