For the first time ever, international creative writing competition Bridport Prize will be broadcasting its award ceremony.

The Bridport Prize has helped launch the career of famous writers, including Kate Atkinson and Kit de Waal.

The annual awards ceremony to celebrate winners in short story, poetry, flash fiction and the novel usually takes place at Bridport Arts Centre and is strictly invitation only. However, the pandemic meant it couldn't go ahead.

Programme manager Kate Wilson said: "Our awards are such a happy celebration with winners coming from all over the world and we had to think hard about how to make this year's ceremony just as memorable.

"We turned to local filmmaker Justin Owen to help us put together as online event to celebrate Bridport and our winners. We hope the whole county will watch."

This year's ceremony promises to be 'a must watch for anyone interested in writing'. It features Elizabeth is Missing author, Emma Healey; founder of The Poetry School, Mimi Khalvati, and the first woman to have a play commissioned by London's Globe Theatre, Nell Leyshon.

The film gets under the skin of the award winners and their witing. It includes industry speakers Euan Thorneycroft from London literary agency AM Heath, whose writers include Hilary Mantel; Aki Schiltz from The Literary Consultancy, which has been offering manuscript and mentoring advice to writers for 25 years, and Mary-Anne Harrington from Tinder Press, which published Maggie O'Farrell and Patrick Gale amongst others.

The Bridport Prize writing competition began in 1973 as an idea by the late Peggy Chapman-Andrews to help fund the newly established art centre. The writing categories were expanded to include a novel award in Peggy's honour after her death in 2013.

The competition attracted entries from 82 countries and is seen as one of the most prestigious writing prizes in the literary world.

The link to the awards evening will be posted on bridportprize.org.uk or email [email protected]

The competition reopens at the end of the awards on October 29 and the deadline for all short stories, poems, flash fiction and novels is May 31.