Birch, Alice: - Alice Birch's previous work at the Royal Court includes Peckham: The Soap Opera and Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again (RSC). Other credits include: We Want You To Watch (National), The Lone Pine Club (Pentabus), Little Light (Orange Tree), Little on the Inside (Almeida / Clean Break), Salt (Comedie de Valence), Many Moons (Theatre 503), Flying the Nest (BBC Radio 4) and Lady Macbeth (BBC Films / BFI / Creative England). Alice was the co-winner of the 2014 George Devine Award for Revolt. She said. Revolt Again and winner of the Arts Foundation Award for Playwriting 2014.
Brogan, Linda: -
Linda Brogan's writing for the theatre includes: You Are What You Eat, The Very Thought of You (both Wolseley/Tricycle); Basil and Beattie (Royal Exchange/Liverpool Everyman); Ghost Town (Clean Break); Black Crows, The Well (both for Contact). Plays for the Radio include God Can See Down Entries. She has won numerous awards, including the 2003 NWP Anniversary Commission for Basil and Beattie; the Lefeurve/Promis Prize; the Alfred Fagon Award 2001; the 2001 Bolton Festival Shorts award for The Well and a BBC Northern Exposure Award for What's In the Cat (2001).
Linda's work includes What's in the Cat (Contact/Royal Court Theatre), You Are What You Eat (Writernet/Hydroponic), Basil and Beattie (Royal Exchange/Liverpool Everyman) and commissions by Wolsey/Tricycle (The Very Thought of You) and Contact (Ghost Town). She was a winner of the Alfred Fagon Award in 2001.
Bruce, Deborah: - Deborah Bruce is a writer and theatre director. Her plays include The House They Grew Up In (Minerva Theatre, Chichester, 2017); The Distance (Orange Tree Theatre and Sheffield Crucible, 2014; a finalist for the 2012-13 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize); Same (National Theatre Connections Festival 2014); and Godchild (Hampstead Theatre, 2013).
Coghlan, Lin: - Lin Coghlan has written widely for theatre, film, television and radio. Her play Apache Tears won the Peggy Ramsay Award and her film First Communion Day won the Dennis Potter Play of the Year Award. While resident writer at the Roayl National Theatre Studio, she developed The Night Garden, which was produced by the Norhcott Theatre, Exeter. Faire Bleu is her first translation for the stage.
Daniels, Sarah: - Sarah Daniel's plays include Ripen Our Darkness (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, 1981); Ma's Flesh is Grass (Crucible Studio Theatre, Sheffield, 1981); The Devil's Gateway (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, 1983); Masterpieces (Manchester Royal Exchange, 1983; Royal Court Theatre, London, 1983/4); Neaptide, winner of the 1982 George Devine Award (Cottesloe, National Theatre, London, 1986); Byrthrite (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, 1986); The Gut Girls (Albany Empire, Deptford, 1988); Beside Herself (Royal Court, London, 1990); Head-Rot Holiday (Clean Break Theatre Company, 1992); The Madness of Esme and Shaz (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, 1994); Blow Your House Down, based on the novel by Pat Barker (Live Theatre, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1995); Dust (Cottesloe, National Theatre, London, 2003); and Flying Under Bridges (Watford Palace Theatre, 2005).
El-Bushra, Suhayla: - "Suhayla El-Bushra is a playwright and screenwriter. In 2015 she was writer in residency at the National Theatre Studio. Her film/TV credits include Hollyoaks, feature screenplays, children's drama and several scripts for Doctors. Suhayla developed an original screenplay, Left Luggage as part of the Guiding Lights scheme where her mentor was Christopher Hampton. Suhayla's stage work includes Pigeons which was produced as part of the Royal Court's Open Court season in 2013 and on a subsequent tour, Cuckoo (Unicorn Theatre, 2014) and The Kilburn Passion (Tricycle, 2014 - two runs). Her play The Suicide, an adaptation of the play by Nikolai Erdman, opened in April 2016 at the National Theatre's Lyttleton Theatre."
Hims, Katie: - Katie Hims is a writer for stage, screen and radio. This year her stage work includes Variations for the National Theatre's NT Connections, Three Minutes After Midnight for The Globe Theatre's Dark Night anthology series, and The Stranger On the Bridge which toured The Tobacco Factory and Salisbury Playhouse. Katie's previous stage work includes Billy the Girl for Clean Break at Soho Theatre and she has spent time on attachment to the National Theatre Studio. Since 2014 Katie has written for the radio series Home Front, including five seasons as lead writer. Other radio work includes Black Eyed Girls (winner of the BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Original Drama), Lost Property (winner of the BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Original Drama), The Gunshot Wedding (winner of The Writer's Guild Best Original Radio Drama) and The Earthquake Girl (winner of the Richard Imison Award). Radio Adaptations include The Martin Beck Killings by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. She has also written for the long running television series Casualty.
Lavery, Bryony: - "A rounded theatre practitioner, Bryony Lavery's skills extend to performer (most notably as Tinkerbell in Peter Pan at the Drill Hall), artistic director (Gay Sweatshop and Female Trouble), writer of children's theatre (including The Dragon Wakes, Madagaskar, and Down Among the Mini Beast) and of many cabarets (including Floorshow with Caryl Churchill for Monstrous Regiment in 1977). From 1989 to 1992 she was Tutor-Lecturer on the M.A. Playwriting Course at Birmingham University. She is an honorary Doctor of Arts at De Montfort University. 'Lavery is one of the best but most consistently underrated playwrights in the country: her talent is lavish. She is a wonderful technician and always surprising: it is never possible to second-guess her.' - Kate Kellaway, Observer"
Lomas, Laura: -
Laura Lomas is a playwright whose plays include Bird (Root Theatre and Echo); Blister (Paines Pough/Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama); Open Heart Surgery (Theatre Uncut); Come to Where I'm From (Paines Plough); Some Machine (Paines Plough/Rose Bruford); The Island (Nottingham Playhouse/Det Norske Oslo); Us Like Gods (Hampstead, Heat and Light); Gypsy Girl (Paines Plough Later at Soho) and Wasteland (New Perspectives/Derby Theatre; shortlisted for the Brian Way Award).
Radio plays include My Boy (BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play; Bronze SONY Award for best radio drama) and Lucy Island (BBC Radio 3).
Her screen work includes Rough Skin (Touchpaper/Channel 4; shortlisted for Best British Short at British Independent Film Awards and Raindance Film Festival). She has also written two episodes of Glue (E4/Eleven Films), and has been commissioned by BBC Radio 4, Manchester Royal Exchange, and jointly by Clean Break and Birmingham Rep. She was a MacDowell Colony Fellow 2013, and a Yaddo Fellow 2014.
Mahfouz, Sabrina: -
Sabrina Mahfouz has recently been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and is the recipient of the 2018 King's Alumni Arts & Culture Award. She has won a Sky Arts Academy Award for Poetry, a Westminster Prize for New Playwrights and a Fringe First Award for her play Chef. Her play With a Little Bit of Luck won the 2019 Best Drama Production at the BBC Radio & Music Awards. She also writes for children and her play Zeraffa Giraffa won a 2018 Off West End Award.
Sabrina is the editor of
The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write, a 2017 Guardian Book of the Year and the forthcoming
Smashing It: Working Class Artists on Life, Art and Making It Happen. She's an essay contributor to the multi-award-winning
The Good Immigrant and is currently writing a biopic of the rapper and producer Wiley, for Pulse Films.
Sarma, Ursula Rani: - Ursula Rani Sarma is of Irish/Indian descent. She burst onto the theatrical scene with ...touched... at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1999 and since then has gone on to write for companies such as The National Theatre London, The Abbey Theatre Dublin, The Traverse Theatre Scotland, Origin Theatre Company New York and The American Conservatory Theatre San Francisco amongst others.
Seaton, Somalia: - Somalia Seaton is an Actress, Writer and Director hailing from South-East London. Somalia's debut play Crowning Glory was staged as a rehearsed reading at Theatre Royal Stratford East and directed by Theatre Royal's Associate director Dawn Reid as part of Stratford's new writing festival Angelic Tales. Somalia is the Founder and Artistic director of No Ball Games Allowed. An arts in education and community company. 'Our mission is to enable young people to discuss and work through issues that affect them within their lives and communities, by using interactive theatre.'
Silas, Shelley: -
Shelley was born in Calcutta and moved to London with her family when she was a child. She was a winner in the ICA's New Blood fiction competition (1996) with her short story Via Calcutta, published in the on-line anthology Endangered Species.
Shrapnel was produced by The Steam Industry at BAC (1999). Falling was at the Bush Theatre (2002) where Shelley was the Pearson writer-in-residence. Radio work includes devising and co-writing The Magpie Stories, Calcutta Kosher, and The Sound Of Silence, all for Radio Four. She adapted (with John Harvey) Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet, which was broadcast on Radio Four in 2005.
She is under commission to the Bush Theatre for Moses Mohammed, and Tamasha Theatre for Partitions. She has written a 90' film, The Wedding Dress, for Touchpaper TV. Shelley has compiled and edited Twelve Days, an anthology published in November 2004.
Wallace, Naomi: -
Naomi Wallace's work has been produced in both the UK and the US. Her plays include 'One Flea Spare', 'In the Heart of America', 'Slaughter City', 'The Inland Sea' and The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek'. She is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, and the Obie Award.
She is presently working on a commission for the Royal National Theatre and the Guthrie Theatre of Minneaopolis.
