Helen Fielding launches £2,000 Bridget Jones prize for northern comedy writing

Helen Fielding has launched a £2,000 comedy writing prize named after Bridget Jones, open only to unpublished, unagented writers living in the north of England. Submissions open on 23 November and close on 1 February 2027.

The Bridget Jones prize for northern comedy writing will award the funniest self-contained piece of first-person prose of 1,000 words. The format deliberately mirrors the anonymous diary columns Fielding wrote for the Independent in the mid-1990s, the columns that first brought Bridget Jones to readers.

Fielding, who grew up in Yorkshire, wrote those original columns and four Bridget Jones novels, and co-wrote the film adaptations starring Renée Zellweger. She said the character's humour came from the people around her in the north: "laughing together at our mess-ups; bringing the fancy and pretentious down to earth".

Who can enter, and what do they win?

The eligibility rules are tight. Writers must live in the north of England, must never have been published, and must not be signed with a literary agent.

• £2,000 for the winner, plus a session with Aitken Alexander Associates, the agency that represents Fielding
• Tailored support from the charity New Writing North
• £1,000 for one runner-up
• No entry fee

"There are lots of famous northern comics," Fielding said. "But this prize is for the comic voices of people who aren't famous: just living their lives being quietly hilarious."

The word limit is not negotiable, and Fielding was blunt about it. "I always tried to make the Bridget columns exactly 1,000 words long – like making the petrol pump stop at exactly 20 quid," she said. "If it's slightly under you won't be punished. Just DON'T MAKE IT ANY LONGER!"

How will the winner be chosen?

Fielding will judge the entries alongside an agent from Aitken Alexander Associates and a representative from New Writing North. She will present the prize in person at next summer's Northern Writers' awards in Newcastle. The prize will run annually until 2029 — four cycles in total, assuming the schedule holds.

Will Mackie of New Writing North framed the prize as a first for the awards programme. "This is the first time the Northern Writers' awards have featured an award exclusively for comedy writing," he said. "There is no one more fitting to identify an original comedy voice than Helen, who created one of the nation's most beloved comic characters of the last 30 years."

That claim about uniqueness is Mackie's, not Fielding's; the organisers offer no figures on how many entries they expect, and the prize's £2,000 purse sits modestly against the £1,000 for the runner-up.

Fielding named her comic inspirations as Victoria Wood, Alan Bennett, Les Dawson, Thora Hird and Morecambe and Wise — a canon of northern humour spanning television, theatre and variety.

What does the prize change for aspiring writers? It offers a paid route into a major agency for people the publishing industry currently has no way of finding — provided they can be funny in exactly 1,000 words.