An anthology of short stories from some of Cheshire’s most talented writers is aiming to shed some light on life as each of us knows it.

This year’s Cheshire Prize for Literature anthology launch was held at the University of Chester’s Queen’s Park Campus to celebrate the publication of the 2015 competition’s best entries.

The selected short stories, including those by the winners and runners up, have been gathered together in Patches of Light, edited by competition judge and programme leader of BA Creative Writing Ian Seed.

Ian said: “Each story in this anthology enters a life ‘glancingly’ but illuminates what is truly important about that life in the process of doing so. The world we inhabit is fast-changing, never quite the same from one moment to the next. Yet with so much to distract and entice us today, how can we know what is ‘real’, what has any kind of genuine worth? Does it really matter?

“The stories here do not pretend to know the answers. Rather they seek to reflect and explore the hopes, dreams, joys, fears and frailties that are common to us all, but which are revealed differently in each life. They may offer us only glimpses, but each glimpse will leave us changed in some way. Like shifting patches of light on water, they invite us to stop and look, to linger for a brief space of time, to take away something we felt we always knew, but didn’t know that we knew before. This is a fantastic collection and each writer included is to be applauded for their creative contribution.”

Contributors this year are: Robert Angus, Pauline Brown, David Bryan, Cathy Bryant, Andrew Fleming, Heather Freckleton, Roy Gray, Annest Gwilym, Sue Hoffmann, Margaret Holbrook, Jan Kaneen, Tom Kilcourse, Liz Milne, Barbara Oldham, Lynne Parry-Griffiths, Ian Pickering, Dominic Teague, Laura Thompson, Lynne Voyce, Gordon Williams, and Valentine Williams.

The Cheshire Prize for Literature was launched in 2003 by the then High Sheriff of Cheshire, John Richards OBE, DL. It has become established as one of the North West’s leading writing competitions.

This year’s competition for poetry will close on September 1, 2016. Organised by the University of Chester, the competition is open to individuals who have lived, studied or worked in Cheshire, and also those who have other connections with the county. For more details visit

http://www.chester.ac.uk/literatureprize .

Patches of Light: Short Stories from the Cheshire Prize for Literature 2015, can be ordered directly from the University of Chester Press by visiting: www.chester.ac.uk/university-press