An actor, a doctor, a musician, an entrepreneur, two teachers, a creative consultant and a radio presenter made our shortlist of 8 aspiring radio drama writers. Chosen from 500 submissions to our online competition run in Spring 2007, they got to complete a radio drama writing workshop at Channel 4. Then they pitched again following rewrites to be chosen as one of the four winners who got their plays produced for Channel 4.

Paula B. Stanic grew up in the east end of London to West Indian parents. Following ‘The Radio Play’s the Thing’ Paula completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Oxford University. Her short Modern Lust had a rehearsed reading at Soho Theatre as part of an Arts Council funded project The 7 Sins by seven new playwrights and she was short-listed for Menagerie theatre’s Rough Diamond competition at the end of last year. Paula is currently working on a full-length stage play. Through introductions from the workshops, Paula is now working with established radio drama producers. Her play, Late Night Shopping features three people who seek sexual encounters when out shopping late at night

Michael Dawson presents & produces a current affairs radio show in South Manchester and its podcast spin off. Hard-hitting documentary working intimately with guests is his forte. He’s also pioneering ‘Dramio’ his term for live mixing of drama and radio using sound effects and actors to follow an ongoing thread. Since the competition, he’s self-produced his  shortlisted play, Second Life & was also shortlisted for Channel 4’s PILOT & is negotiating a new media deal for the work.
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Anna Symons, formerly a producer & director of documentaries and current affairs, was chosen as one of TV’s most promising new talents at the 1996 Edinburgh Television Festival (TV25 scheme). Now committed to writing drama, Anna projects in development include her short, Friday Prayers, picked up by Liane Gillett at Feelgood Fiction. Anna was also a finalist in the Channel 4 Pitch Factor at the Cheltenham Screenwriting Festival, with Dirty Weekend. Her short Viv won the Skillset Screen Academy 35mm Script competition and was filmed at Ealing Studios. She’s just developed a new series idea, Double You  which follows a group of graduates as they try and achieve their dreams in the real world and in the virtual world of Second Life. For Anna, the competition’s really helped her develop as a writer. Through it, she’s now in script development meetings with producers Nick Russell-Pavier and John Dryden. Her play, I’m Posh Me is a black comedy about a woman’s obsession with Posh & Becks.

Delwyn Harris, though now focused full time on writing, has mainly worked as a teacher at a further education college in Lancashire where he taught students with learning difficulties. He also taught the philosophy components of the A Level RE course as his academic background was in Philosophy which he studied at York and Cambridge. Inspired by the potential for character development & narrative during a short car journey, he submitted two scripts: Sharing - on the intimacy experienced by two colleagues sharing a lift to work – and There Was This Boy – on the vulnerability of a young person with learning difficulties naively accepting a lift from a dubious older man.

Brussels based D.A.McIlroy, from Northern Ireland, works as a creative consultant, policy advisor, journalist and lecturer serving clients including The Council of Europe, the World Bank, Belfast City Council and Arts & Business. He also advises on projects in Eastern Europe and China.  More

Cambridge businessman Stephen Todd is a ‘blue collar’ consultant and director of Operations Management Research (OMR). As Associate Fellow of the Said Business School, he links the University of Oxford with technology businesses and mentors MBA Students. More

Paediatrician, Andy Prendergast trained in Cambridge and London, working most recently in Great Ormond Street Hospital. He’s currently doing medical research at Oxford on HIV infection in kids, strategizing to develop an HIV vaccine, and new methods of HIV treatment. More

Caroline Gilfillan started out as a drummer and singer- songwriter on London’s music circuit. Now living in Norfolk, she works as a fiction writer, poet, dramatist and workshop leader. She’s a member of the Inprint Collective of Poets & Artists and is chair of Poetry–next-the-Sea in North Norfolk. More

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