Simon Longman is a playwright from the West Midlands. His plays include Patient Light (Eastern Angles); Island Town (Paines Plough); Gundog (Royal Court); Rails (TBTL); White Sky (RWCMD/Royal Court); Sparks (Old Red Lion); Milked (Pentabus Theatre Company). He is the recipient of the 49th George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright and has previously won the Channel 4 Playwrights' Scheme. His work has been translated and produced internationally. He is represented by Judy Daish Associates.
Lisa McGee, an award-winning screenwriter and playwright from Derry, is the creator, writer and executive producer of the acclaimed Derry Girls. She co-created, co-wrote and was executive producer on The Deceived with her husband Tobias Beer and was creative director, executive producer and wrote an episode of the BBC monologues on poverty Skint. Her other TV credits include London Irish, Raw, Being Human, The White Queen, and Indian Summers.
Leo Butler is an award-winning playwright. His plays have been produced by many of the UK's most important theatres, including National Theatre, Royal Court, Almeida, Birmingham Rep, and Royal Shakespeare Company.
He has written many celebrated plays about young people, including Made of Stone (Royal Court), Redundant (Royal Court), Boy (Almeida), and Decades (Brit School/Bridge Theatre Co.)
He has written historical plays such as I'll Be The Devil0 (RSC), and contemporary dramas such as Lucky Dog (Royal Court), Faces in the Crowd (Royal Court) and The Early Bird (Queen's Theatre, Belfast).
He has also adapted classics like Woyzeck (Birmingham Rep), pantomimes and comedies such as Cinderella (Theatre Royal Stratford East) and All You Need is LSD (Birmingham Rep), and musicals such as Alison! The Rock Opera (Royal Court/King's Head).
For ten years, Leo was Writers Tutor at the Royal Court Theatre and helped nurture a new generation of playwriting talent.
Jordan Tannahill is a novelist, playwright, and director of film and theatre.
He has been described as being 'widely celebrated as one of Canada's most accomplished young playwrights, filmmakers and all-round multidisciplinary artists' (Toronto Star); 'one of Canada's most extraordinary artists' (CBC Arts); and 'the enfant terrible of Canadian theatre' (Libération).
His debut novel, Liminal, won France's 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires. His second novel, The Listeners, was a Canadian national bestseller, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Giller Prize.
Avaes Mohammad's scripts have chronicled post 9/11 multicultural Britain and represented the challenges of young people in the UK. He currently seeks to engage with the heritage of Islamic and Sufi literatures, reinterpreting them for contemporary western audiences. As a performance poet his influences range from the Sufi Saints of South Asia to the Dub Poets of Jamaica. His essays and opinion pieces engage with topics that include integration, identity and the arts. Avaes is enjoying writing long form fiction.
Jon Brittain is a playwright, comedy writer and director. His play Rotterdam won the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre and was nominated for the Evening Standard's Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright. His other plays include the Fringe First Award-winning A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad) and the critically acclaimed musical adaptation of David Walliams' children's book Billionaire Boy. He co-wrote and directed the cult hit Margaret Thatcher Queen of Soho and its sequel Margaret Thatcher Queen of Game Shows. He has directed all of John Kearns' stand-up shows including the Edinburgh Comedy Award-winning Sight Gags for Perverts and Shtick. He has also directed shows for Tom Allen, Tom Rosenthal and Mat Ewins. Most recently he directed the world premiere of Richard Gadd's Fringe First Award-winning play Baby Reindeer. For television he has worked as a staff writer for Cartoon Network's The Amazing World of Gumball and Netflix's The Crown.
He was one of the 503Five 2012/2013 and has worked extensively with Old Vic New Voices. He has written for Radio 4's The Now Show and Cartoon Network's The Amazing World of Gumball, and created and starred in the online sketch show HodgePodge. He directed both of John Kearns's Fosters Award-winning stand-up shows Sight Gags for Perverts and Shtick, and Tom Allen's show Both Worlds.
Molly Taylor is a writer & theatre-maker from Liverpool. Recent projects include; The Keyworkers Cycle (Almeida Theatre), Sinder (Dundee Rep), Me For The World (Young Vic Taking Part). Her plays for young people include; The Wave (Almeida Theatre), What Was Left (Southwark Playhouse), Cacophony (Almeida Theatre), and Earthlings (The Yard). Her solo shows include; Extinguished Things (Edinburgh Fringe / Adelaide Fringe), and Love Letters to the Public Transport System (National Theatre of Scotland).
Shamser Sinha writes about people at the wrong end of money, fortune and the wars we fight. Outside of theatre, he works as a sociologist and child/youth worker with; young asylum seekers and refugees; those living in children's homes; and those with additional needs. His plays include; Our White Skoda Octavia (Eastern Angles/Derby Theatre and national tour); Three Sat Under the Banyan Tree for 7+ (Polka Theatre/Tara Arts and national tour, nominated for Best Production at the Asian Arts, Culture and Theatre Awards 2019 ); The Dissidents (Tricycle [now Kiln] Young Company); and Khadija is 18 (The Finborough Theatre - Pearson Playwright Award). He and his colleague Les Back co-wrote the non-fiction book Migrant City published by Routledge, in which they followed the lives of 30 young migrants over 10 years.
Ed Harris is an award-winning, dyslexic playwright, poet and comedy writer based in Brighton. Before finding his feet as a writer, Ed was a binman, care worker... and even once spent a winter as a husky trainer in Lapland! His first major play Mongrel Island opened at Soho Theatre in 2011 to great critical acclaim, and was later produced in Mexico as Perro Sin Raza, where it ran for six months. His other plays include The Cow Play, What the Thunder Said (which won The Writers' Guild Award for Best Play For Younger Audiences), and Never Ever After (shortlisted for the Meyer-Whitworth award). He wrote his first opera, A Shoe Full of Stars, with composer Omar Shahryar. It was described as a 'comic opera for children... about terrorism!' and won the international YAM Award in 2018 for Best Opera.
Alison Carr is a playwright and radio dramatist.
Her plays include: The Last Quiz Night on Earth (Box of Tricks, UK tour, 2020); Caterpillar (shortlisted for the Theatre503 Playwriting Award 2016; premiered at Theatre503, London, 2018) and Iris (Live Theatre, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2016; winner of the Journal Culture Awards 2017 Writer of the Year).
