Bridport Prize writers have a deadline of May

Their poems, short stories, flash fiction and first novel chapters will be judged by Roger McGough Jane Rogers, David Gaffney and Jane Feaver respectively.

Winners in the past have gone on to become well-respected published authors as well as being £5,000 richer.

Last year was the first time the prize offered The Peggy Chapman-Andrews category for a few chapters of a first novel in honour of the memory of the prize’s founder.

New prize administrator Kate Wilson said: “We were astonished and delighted with the response to the inaugural Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award for a first novel.

“More than 1,200 entries were received keeping our readers and partners A.M Heath and The Literary Consultancy busy all summer.”

The opening chapters of the winning entries - Caroline Chisholm’s 1st prize winning Swimming Pool Hill and Ian Nettleton’s The Last Migration and runner-up novels can be read on the Bridportprize.org.uk website.

The Literary Consultancy is currently mentoring Caroline and both Ian and Caroline will be blogging about writing their novels in the coming months.

Last year saw the departure of prize administrator Frances Everitt after more than a decade.

Her post has been taken on by Kate Wilson from Bridport Arts Centre.

Both the short story and poetry winners each received £5,000 and the 250-word flash fiction and novel entries £1,000 each.

Last year’s poetry judge Liz Lockhead said her job of picking the eventual winner was onerous.

She said: “At the end of July I had received the parcel of poems pre-selected by the excellent Candy Neubert.

“ Even when this lavish and very varied pre-selection arrived I was still, frankly, overwhelmed and rather daunted. I suspect other judges have hoped, as I did, that the winning poem would hit me like a revelation on the first reading, announce itself as the one and only? This didn’t happen. Not for me. Not this time.”

Short Story judge Andrew Miller had a slightly easier task, he said.

“I feared it would be very difficult to choose a winner from among the box of stories I was sent, that I would hover over a dozen like an indecisive shopper, but in the end it was simple enough. “All three of the winning stories stood out, each of them, at first reading, a cut above. Not that the general standard was low – it wasnʼt.

“There were funny stories, macabre ones, stories with a twist in the tail. Many of them seemed the work of people who already had built up some expertise in this form. Well- organized, nicely balanced stories with a beginning, a middle and an end.”

Details on how to enter are on the bridportprize.org.uk website.

Bridport Prize volunteers sent out 150,000 leaflets Peter and Pat Dutton seen here iin January 2013. Picture by Graham Shackleton