Grab your pen and notepad, as a popular creative writing competition has been launched.

The Bridport Prize, a project of the Bridport Arts Centre, invites writers to follow in the footsteps of previous winners who have now gone onto be household names, including Kate Atkinson, Helen Dunmore and Tobias Hill.

Founded in 1973, the competition was established with the dual aim of raising funds for the arts centre and providing a platform for emerging writers.

Forty-six years later it has an international reputation, attracts more than 10,000 entries per year and in 2017, received entries from 74 countries.

The competition is split into four categories: poetry, short stories, flash fiction (very short stories of 250 words or fewer) and the Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award for a First Novel, named in honour of the prize's founder.

The novel award is run in partnership with London based literary agency, A.M. Heath and the manuscript appraisal company The Literary Consultancy.

It's currently open to writers in the UK and Republic of Ireland while the other categories are open to UK and international entrants.

The poetry and short story category prize is £5000, the flash fiction prize is £1000 and the winner of the novel award receives £1000 plus up to a year's mentoring from The Literary Consultancy through its Chapter & Verse mentoring scheme (worth £2340).

There is also an additional prize, The Dorset Award, for local writers.

The award, sponsored by The Bookshop in Bridport, offers a cash prize and publication in the anthology to the highest placed writer from Dorset in the competition each year.

The top poems, short stories and flash fiction stories are published in an anthology which is unveiled at the prize-giving ceremony held at the centre each October.

The judges for the 2018 competition are Daljit Nagra for poetry, Monica Ali for short stories and flash fiction, and Kamila Shamsie for the novel award.

Kamila Shamsie said: "I'll be looking for stories that take risks, stories that understand form and are engaged with the possibilities of language, stories that stay with me long after I've finished reading them."

The competition is open until Thursday, May 31.

Submissions can be made online at bridportprize.org.uk, by downloading a postal entry form from the website or collecting an entry form from the arts centre or a local library.