Helen Fielding Launches the Bridget Jones Prize for Comic Writing

What is the Bridget Jones Prize? A new award for comic writing by unpublished writers in the North of England, set up by Helen Fielding, the Yorkshire-born creator of Bridget Jones. New Writing North announced it on October 20, 2026 as the newest part of its Northern Writers' Awards. It is free to enter, and it opens for submissions on November 23, 2026.

The entry is short on purpose. Entrants send the funniest stand-alone piece of first-person prose they can manage, up to 1,000 words, in a nod to Bridget's diary entries, which began as an anonymous column in The Independent.

"I always tried to make the Bridget columns exactly 1,000 words long – like making the petrol pump stop at exactly twenty quid," Fielding said in the announcement. "So, this is for the funniest standalone, first-person 1,000 words. If it's slightly under you won't be punished. Just DON'T MAKE IT ANY LONGER!"

Who can enter

The prize page sets four conditions. Entrants must:

• Live in the North of England when they enter, and plan to stay for at least another 12 months.
• Be over 18.
• Be a debut writer who has not yet published or self-published a full-length work. Short work in magazines and anthologies is allowed.
• Be unagented.

The piece must be in the first person and can be fiction or life writing. Applicants also answer a set of application questions. Entries go through Submittable, and the form goes live on November 23. Do not put your name on the extract. The deadline is February 1, 2027, at 12pm (midday).

Note the self-publishing rule. Anyone who has self-published a full-length book is not eligible, even without a publisher or agent.

What the winners get

There is one winner and one highly commended writer.

The winner receives a £2,000 bursary. The highly commended writer receives £1,000. Both get an advisory session with an agent from Aitken Alexander Associates, Fielding's literary agency, and access to New Writing North's writer support programme. The prize page says that program includes membership of the Society of Authors, networking events, one-to-one support from the talent development team, and advisory sessions with publishing professionals.

The judges are Fielding, an agent from Aitken Alexander Associates, and a representative of New Writing North. The winner will be announced at the Northern Writers' Awards ceremony in Newcastle in summer 2027, and Fielding will present the award. The prize is set to run for three years, in 2027, 2028 and 2029.

Why Fielding says she is doing it

In the announcement, Fielding said Bridget's "comedy heart came from the everyday humour of people around me when growing up in Yorkshire: laughing together at our mess-ups; bringing the fancy and pretentious down to earth." She added: "There are lots of famous Northern comics. But this prize is for the comic voices of people who aren't famous: just living their lives being quietly hilarious."

New Writing North names the northern comedy that shaped her writing: Morecambe and Wise, Victoria Wood, Les Dawson, Thora Hird and Alan Bennett.

The BBC reported that Fielding, speaking at an event for The Independent, said opportunity for writers in the UK is "very uneven," adding: "There's much more opportunity in the south than in the north, where I grew up."

Will Mackie, senior programme manager for talent development at New Writing North, said: "This is the first time the Northern Writers' Awards have featured an award exclusively for comedy writing."

Why it matters for authors

Comic writing rarely gets its own prize, and it is hard to place with agents without a track record. This prize offers money, but the more useful part may be the agent session and a year of structured support, for writers who by definition have no agent yet.

It also rewards a form many writers already practise: the short, first-person, voice-driven piece. That is the kind of writing that can turn into a column, a newsletter, or the opening of a novel, as it did for Fielding.

If you are eligible, you have about a month to draft before entries open, and a little over two months once they do. Keep to 1,000 words. Write in the first person. Leave your name off the page. And read the full eligibility rules on the prize page before you submit.