Biographies

Jenny Bardwell

Jenny Bardwell left school at 16 and worked as a secretary in BBC education. After taking one A-level at the Working Men’s College, she went to UEA to read English at 23. Jenny spent 12 years as a producer of arts programmes at the BBC Open University including directing drama and was series producer on the Shakespeare course. She’s an avid theatre fan and former Olivier Awards panellist. In spite of being continually pestered by the BBC to come back as a highly paid executive, J she thinks her ideal job would be programming an arts festival in some medieval town where the wine flows and the sun always shines.

Clive Brill

After graduating from Oxford University, Clive Brill joined the BBC where he worked for 12 years as a producer and commissioning editor for BBC R4 Drama Series & Serials - producing over 100 radio plays - and the long-running series The Archers. He also edited "Citizens" for two years.

In 1990 he joined TV Drama as head of Development for BBC TV Series, producing a number of BBC series and films including the Bafta-winning The Healer by G F Newman, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, Crazy for a Kiss by Greg Snow and A Few Short Journeys of the Heart by Andrew Davies. He was also Executive Producer on the BBC TV series Seaforth.

During this time he also directed in theatre including the world premiere of Welcome to the Bladonmore Rd by Martin Lynch at the Belfast Arts Centre and George Chapman's The Widows Tears at The Bear Gardens.

In 1996 he left the BBC to embark on the Arkangel Complete Shakespeare project. He directed all 38 Shakespeare plays for this series, which starred many great British actors such as Sir John Gielgud, Eileen Atkins, Joe Fiennes, Alan Howard, Sinead Cusack and Ciaran Hinds.

In 2000 he formed the production company Pacificus Productions and exec produced the feature film Before You Go, directed by Lewis Gilbert, written by Shelagh Stephenson and starring Julie Walters, Tom Wilkinson, John Hannah and Victoria Hamilton. Pacificus was a key investor in the West End hit This is Our Youth, directed by Lawrence Boswell.

He gives occasional lectures on drama and scriptwriting at The Arvon Foundation and Sheffield-Hallam University. His other more 'dubious' achievements include producing Margaret Thatcher reading The Gettysburg Address for the EMI Classics version of Copland's The Lincoln Portrait and getting to number 121 in the charts with The Green Rap.

Clive lives in Hackney, London with his wife, two children and a dog.

John Dryden

John Dryden is a UK writer/director currently working on a feature film based on the Vikram Seth novel, A SUITABLE BOY, which is being produced by Jane Scott and Martin McCallum. He has recently attended the Binger Institute in Amsterdam to develop the script. His interest in radio drama has led to a number of award winning radio productions for the BBC including: FATHERLAND, based on the novel by Robert Harris (Spoken Word Publishing Awards 2004 – Winner: Best Drama); THE HANDMAID’S TALE, based on the novel by Margaret Atwood (Spoken Word Publishing Awards 2002 – Nominated: Best Production); and BLEAK HOUSE, based on the novel by Charles Dickens (Sony Radio Awards 1999 – Winner: Best Drama. Talkie Awards 1999 – Winner: Best Dramatisation – Winner: Best Classic Abridgement).

His radio dramatisation of Vikram Seth’s A SUITABLE BOY was short-listed in the audio category of the 2003 British Book Awards and won the Production and Drama awards at the 2002 Spoken Word Publishing Awards. Other dramas for the BBC include an original thriller HOTEL EUROPA, which was nominated for the 2002 Prix Europa, and a semi-improvised, news-based drama series ELECTION LIVES. He directed and co-wrote (with the US artist Gregory Whitehead) a short film, The Bone Trade.

Robin Field

Robin Field works for Denham Productions as a development researcher and production runner on a few UKTV Food series; self shooting on corporate gigs and directing/AP'ing on a one off Rick Stein programme to be aired in Christmas 2008. He’s still on a mission, making short films in his spare time spurred on by his early surprise with Country Commute which was shown in the 3 Minute Wonder slot.

Maud Hand

Maud Hand is a multi-media producer, trainer and writer with over 18 years experience in production, project management and rich media content for national broadcasters including the BBC, Channel 4 Television and RTÉ. Developing new talent is her hallmark. Her radio drama production expertise was honed during a BBC production traineeship, part of which was spent at their Radio Drama department where she worked with Claire Grove and Jeremy Mortimer on a variety of productions including a location recording of Graham Swift’s Last Orders, Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres & Jean Rhys’ The Wild Sargasso Sea.

She currently manages The Play’s The Thing, an online radio drama repository for Channel 4. She was the founding editor of the Northern Ireland hub of Channel 4’s IDEASFACTORY, now re-branded as 4Talent Northern Ireland, a flagship interactive talent initiative for the broadcast media industries. (Jan 2004 – Jan 2007). She produced a series of web films for The Belfast Masterclass in broadcast media which she designed and delivered for Channel 4 and Belfast City Council. She managed the workshop delivery of ORIGINATION:INSITE, an innovative cultural website project in partnership with national museums around England, commissioned by Culture Online, DCMS and nominated for a BIMA award.

Her commission, Turner Round, a four part podcast series on the Turner Prize Nominees 2006 was the first arts series commissioned by Channel 4 Radio. She also  originates and produces documentaries and short form series for BBC Network Radio and the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, supplying productions to RTE, Newstalk & a plethora of commercial Irish radio stations. She is a production mentor for commercial radio in Ireland and active works to develop its independent radio production sector through her voluntary role as PR for AIRPI (The Association of Independent Radio Producers of Ireland).

She has edited websites for BBC including World on Your Street. Maud has authored training manuals in radio production for The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland and is a visiting lecturer in radio practice and web journalism at The University of Westminster, South Bank University, the National University of Ireland (Galway – John Huston School of Film & Digital Media), the University of Ulster & the University of Limerick. She is a consultant course designer and trainer for the London College of Communication, University of the Arts. For TFPL her in-house and tailor made ‘writing for the web’ courses have been very popular with the private and public sector alike.

Katie Hims

Katie Hims’ first stage play BILL was produced at the Contact Theatre and was nominated for Best New Play in the Manchester Evening News Awards. Her second play THE BREAKFAST SOLDIERS was first produced at the Contact Theatre Studio and later at the Finborough Theatre in London where it was Time Out Critic’s Choice. Her stage play WILD LUNCH was given a rehearsed reading by Paines Plough at The Bridewell Theatre in London and later produced at the Alma Tavern in Bristol by Theatre West. Katie’s first radio play THE EARTHQUAKE GIRL won the Richard Imison Award and was nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award. She was writer in residence at BBC Radio Drama in 2001/02 and has written extensively for radio. She is currently writing her third episode for the television series Casualty. Katie is a graduate of the National Film and Television School.

Rory McSwiggan

Rory McSwiggan is originally from Omagh and since moving to London in 2004, has worked in TV playout for BBC Broadcast and Ascent Media. He’s an experienced video editor who trained at Derry's Nerve Centre before joining the production team at c9tv, editing a range of local news and current affairs programmes. Rory has edited a selection of web films for Channel 4's IDEASFACTORY and is currently web assistant on the Northern Ireland hub. As a VJ and performer in his spare time, Rory has worked with the In Your Space theatre company on the Live, Interactive Hypertheatre Show, Occipital.

Cathy Stewart

Cathy Stewart works for BBC Radio and Television as a script reader/editor, researcher, writer and broadcaster. Her abridgements for BBC Radio 4 include Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Carson McCullers’ The Member Of The Wedding, Archy & Mehitabel by Don Marquis and a selection of novellas by Stefan Zweig read by Corin Redgrave and Kika Markham. She has written columns and talks for Radios 3 & 4 and over 50 magazine articles. She has worked as a newsreader for the BBC World Service and as a BBC TV announcer and voice over artist. Most recently she was engaged as a development executive for an independent radio production company, script reading, editing and supervising proposal writing as well as recruiting new writing talent.

Nick Warburton

Nick Warburton has written scripts for stage, television and radio. Seven novels for children and young adults have been published, as have short stories and stage plays, some of which have also appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe. A stage adaptation of Farmer Giles of Ham toured during 2003. For Starters appeared at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough in 2004 and Purvis opens there this year. He has also written stories, dramas, non-fiction features and songs for Schools Radio.

He has run courses on creative writing up and down the country, in West Africa for the British Council and in Dubai. He is a member of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, was on the judging panel for their children's book award in 1994, and chaired the same panel in 1995. He is a Visiting Fellow at University College Chichester, and in 2005 was nominated for an Arts Foundation Fellowship by Sir Alan Ayckbourn.

He’s written more than fifty scripts for radio, including Conversations from the Engine Room (joint-winner of the BBC/Radio Times Drama Award in 1985); adaptations of Tolstoy's Resurrection, Father and Son by Edmund Gosse, the children’s classic Moonfleet and Lark Rise by Flora Thompson. A Grove of Straight Trees was short-listed for the BBC/Radio Times Drama Award in 1993, and A Soldier’s Debt was the BBC entry for the 1999 Prix Italia. Among his children's books are The Thirteenth Owl, To Trust a Soldier, Ackford's Monster and Lost in Africa.

His televison work includes scripts for Doctors, Holby City, EastEnders and Born and Bred.

Sarah Weatherall

Sarah Weatherall went to art school, then directed two short films. She is a writer with a theatre collective and has had two plays produced on the fringe. She came to love radio drama as a kid when her mother listened to the afternoon play on BBC Radio 4. Read her blog.

Stephen Williams

Stephen Williams is an experienced television script editor who started out working at Channel 5 as a Storyliner on the daily soap Family Affairs.  He then moved to BBC Drama Serials working on many high profile shows, such as Cutting It, Auf Weidersehen Pet IV, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, and the Bafta nominated Kevin Elyot adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky.

The Writers

Caroline Gilfillan is a fiction writer, poet, and dramatist.  Selected for the New Writing Partnership’s Escalator scheme for fiction writers in 2007, she was awarded a grant from Arts Council England in 2008.  She was nominated for the Forward Prize for the best individual poem in 2007 and her work appeared in the Forward Collection of Poetry in the same year.  She’s won several national short story competitions, and her poems and short stories have appeared recently in The London Magazine, Poetry News and Mslexia.  She was a winner of the North West Poetry competition in 2000, and Drowned in Overspill, a collection of her poetry, was published by Crocus Books in the same year. 

Caroline is a member of the Inprint collective of poets and artists, and is chair of the festival committee of Poetry-next-the-Sea, the North Norfolk poetry festival.  She has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University, and is currently developing a novel, dramas for radio and stage, and a second collection of poetry.  She gives readings, leads workshops, and runs writing residencies in different settings.  In a previous existence she played drums in various London bands, and worked as a singer and songwriter. 
www.carolinegilfillan.co.uk

D.A.McIlroy works as a creative consultant, policy advisor, journalist and lecturer serving international clients including The Council of Europe, The European Forum of Arts & Heritage, the World Bank, London’s Futurecity, Belfast City Council and Arts & Business. He also works on cultural and civil society programmes in Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Macedonia, Poland and China.  Professionally he has contributed to Debating matters, Hodder & Stoughton, May 2002; The Business of Heritage, in association with the European Heritage Group, 1998; Culture and Value, a guide to arts partnerships in Italy; Heritage in Danger, Conference report 1999 Conference of the World Monument Fund ; Funding and Friendships, Council of Europe Cultural Policy series (translated into Russian), 2004

As a  creative writer, D.A. has adapted and directed many plays in Brussels, most notably Three Sisters, Hedda Gabler and Tartoof! (after Molière). He recently won a Channel Four Radio Play Award with ‘The Interpreter’ ; his short stories have been short listed for the prestigious Bridport Prize and the F.E. MacManus Short Story Award. 
www.irishtheatregroup.com

Andy Prendergast trained as a paediatrician in Cambridge and London, working in London hospitals, most recently in Great Ormond Street. He’s currently doing medical research at Oxford on HIV infection in kids, developing strategies for an HIV vaccine, and new methods of HIV treatment. 

Writing-wise, apart from a stint writing for medical school revues, this is Andy’s first proper foray into drama.  He’s currently writing his first stage play and has started work on a second radio play, having discovered the benefits of the medium through the competition. This will be about the social and political situation in South Africa, based on his experiences of working there.

Stephen Todd is an Oxford based entrepreneur and Director of Operations Management Research (OMR). As Associate Fellow of the Said Business School, he mentors MBA students and builds links between the University of Oxford and the technology industry. Prior to founding OMR in 2003, Stephen worked with Pittiglio Rabin Todd & McGrath (PRTM), Hewlett-Packard and GEC-Marconi. He holds an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge University and an Executive MBA from the London Business School.

Stephen has been writing seriously for the last four years. His play Going Down won the 2006 Valley Theatre Company New Writing Award and was performed at the St. James Arts Centre, Scarborough in February 2007. He was selected for the Arts Council of Wales’  Writer Development Programme with dramaturg Katie O’Reilly. His play The Remnants of Once Fine Girls was workshopped by director Gilly Adams and had a public rehearsed reading in the Aberystwyth Arts Centre Studio in February 2008. Stephen’s working on a TV sitcom and developing material with Electric Mouse Comedy Collective for Edinburgh Free Fringe 2008. He received a Diploma in Creative Writing (with Distinction) from the University of Oxford in 2006 and is now studying for their Master of Studies (M.St.) in Creative Writing.

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