The Friends of Upton Library have held an awards evening for their inaugural Short Story Competition.

Chaired by Cllr Fred Drane, with Adrian Ford as MC, the celebrations began with a special award of £20 in WH Smith vouchers to a group of literary youngsters aged from three to 10, and their leader Mrs Jan Cooke, who read out several of their stories.

Nick Allen, founder of Dorset Scribblers, gave an informative talk on how new authors could help themselves get published or win competitions.

The under-18s winner was Eloise Orchard, aged 10, with ‘There’s a Wolf in our Oven’ who took the £26 top prize. The open winner out of 51 entries was Richard Nicholson with ‘The Ferryman’s Wife’ who received £51.

Authors read out their stories and some were read by Fiona Tait, Nick Allen and one of the judges Adrian Ford, who said it had been difficult to pick the winners from the very high standard of entries.

“Overall we had entries from age three through to over 79, across genres including science fiction, horror, fantasy, romance, crime and historical. We also had a fine example of a literary critique,” he said.