THE deadline for this year’s Bridport Prize creative writing competition is fast approaching.

The competition, founded in 1973, is the flagship project of Bridport Arts Centre and attracts entries from across the globe each year.

There are four competition strands, 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 judges this year are Hollie McNish for poetry, Kirsty Logan for short stories and flash fiction and Naomi Wood for the novel award.

To celebrate the prize’s home in Dorset, there is a special Dorset Award for a local writer, given to the person who places highest in the competition each year. This is sponsored by The Bookshop in Bridport, the town’s independent book-store. The current holder is Simon Middleton from Bridport who won in 2018 for his poem Space Was a Material.

The winner receives £100 plus a specially designed trophy and they are invited to the prize-giving lunch at Bridport Arts Centre in October. Their work is also published in the winners’ anthology.

Anyone wishing to submit their work to the competition can do so online at https://www.bridportprize.org.uk/ or by picking up an entry form from any local library. Postal entry forms can also be downloaded via a link on the home page of the website above.

The closing date is May 31 at midnight and winners will be notified in September ahead of the prize-giving on October 19.