A LAST call for entries to the High Sheriff’s Cheshire Prize for Literature is being made as the closing date for the competition which has a £2,000 reward draws near.

Aspiring poets have until Monday, September 1, 2014 to submit their entry into this annual competition, organised by the University of Chester and sponsored by MBNA.

The theme of this year’s competition is Children’s Literature, and entrants are asked to submit a previously unpublished piece of writing aimed at children aged between seven and 14.

It may be in prose or verse, and a prose entry should not exceed 1,500 words while a verse entry should not exceed 100 lines.

The writer must be aged 18 years or over by the competition’s closing date and the writer must have been born, live or have lived, study or have studied, work or have worked, in Cheshire.

For the purposes of the Prize, Cheshire is deemed to include the Wirral, as well as Warrington and Halton.

Additional prize-money of £750 will be awarded, and the best entries will be published in an anthology by the University of Chester Press.

Full competition rules can be downloaded from chester.ac.uk/literatureprize.