Byline: Laura Davis

THE co-creator of the Liverpool Playhouse's hit production Ghost Stories has been named winner of the prestigious Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Jeremy Dyson, who with Andy Nyman wrote the sell-out show, which is currently touring to the West End, was chosen for his collection, The Cranes That Build Cranes.

Rob Shearman, the man credited with bringing the Daleks back to Doctor Who, was announced as the winner of The Readers' Prize for Love Songs For The Shy And Cynical.

Dyson, who is best known for his work on the cult TV series The League Of Gentlemen, said he was delighted to win the prize.

He said: "I''m delighted to win the Edge Hill prize because it is nice to know that all the people who read the collection liked my work.

"Writing can be a lonely business and you can feel very sensitive towards your work, so it is a boost to know that people enjoy reading it."

Shearman, who wrote the Doctor Who episode Dalek starring Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper, appeared at Liverpool's Writing On The Wall festival in May.

He said: "The short story is very non-commercialised.

"When you are nominated for a prize like this it is fantastic because you always hope that people will read your work and it is evidence that people not only read it but like it."

The judging panel this year included Professor Tanya Byron, writer, psychologist and Edge Hill University's chancellor; Katharine Fry, trade buying manager at bookshop Blackwell; and 2009 prize winner Chris Beckett.

For the first time in the competition's four-year history, the Reader's Prize was judged by three groups of English A-Level students. …