Helen Fielding launches comedy-writing prize for northern writers

Helen Fielding has launched a prize for unpublished comedy writers in northern England, offering £2,000 and writing support to the winner as part of an effort to discover new voices.

The Bridget Jones Prize is run with writing charity New Writing North and will reward the funniest 1,000-word piece of first-person writing. It is open to writers based in the north of England who do not have an agent.

Fielding said opportunities for writers across the UK were “very uneven”, with more available in the south than in the north, where she grew up. She said the humour in Bridget Jones drew on the everyday comedy of people around her in Yorkshire.

The prize will run for three years, from 2027 to 2029. Submissions open on 23 November 2026 and close on 1 February 2027. The winner will be announced at the Northern Writers’ Awards ceremony in Newcastle next summer and presented with the award by Fielding.

Fielding’s Bridget Jones began as a newspaper column in 1995 and became a novel the following year. The character went on to feature in several sequels and film adaptations starring Renée Zellweger. [1]