Cheshire Prize | University of Chester

Cheshire Prize for Literature 2025/26

The winners of this year’s Cheshire Prize for Literature awards were announced on Thursday, 2nd July.

The winners in each category were as follows:

Primary Poetry: Livvy Alexander with Our Teacher’s in Detention

Primary Stories: Cara Simnett with Predators and Prey

Secondary Poetry: Ethan Tinarwo with Hourglass

Secondary Stories: Vanessa Kwok with Count to Three

Children’s Literature: Carol Howard with Family Mouse

Flash Fiction: John Paul Davies with Does Bublē Dream of Electric Sheep

Adult Poetry: Geoff Logan with We feel in the same language

Adult scriptwriting: Andrew Hayward with Time Discrepancy Review

Adult Short Stories: Margaret Harper with A Time to Weep

Congratulations to all the winners.

The next competition will launch in November.

For details of the competitions for future years:

Please read the full terms and conditions for full details of the competition and to see the criteria for each category.

Any queries about the competition or to be added to the mailing list should be emailed to cheshireprize@chester.ac.uk or phone 01244 511344.

An Anthology of each year's winners and shortlisted entries is published by the University of Chester Press. Please see catalogue.

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 premier competitions in the area, fostering the literary talents of both new and established 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 at all ages. This year’s competition features four categories: short stories, poetry, children's literature, and scriptwriting.