Northern Voices
Writers

Sian Armstrong

Performer, theatre creator, writer, and creative practitioner Sian Armstrong. In 2017,
Sian produced her one-woman show STUPID, which sold out regional performances
and earned raving reviews, including one critic who called it "the greatest piece of
theatre seen this season." Sian received a Young Writers Talent Fund grant in 2018.
(New Writing North).
Sian participated in Live Theatre's "Intro to Playwriting" programme in 2019, which
helped her create her most recent play, Magic Bus, which earned Live Theatre's Artist
Bursary for 2019–20 and made the 2020 Traverse Open Submissions shortlist.
Sian was part of Scratch Me 2020-21 (BFI & Film Hub North), where she received
mentorship from Baby Cow Productions & adapted STUPID into a short film. Sian
recently performed in Zoe Murtagh's film 'After The Break' (BBC4: Female
Filmmakers Too), has been commissioned as part of The Dukes’ 50th Anniversary
2022, and is co-writing a comedy about the women of 1700's Newcastle supported by
Live Theatre & Arts Council England.

Amy Arnold

Amy Arnold is a budding author who resides in Macclesfield. She travelled
around the UK and beyond for several years, working odd and interesting
occupations (including a brief spell milking cows), before settling beside the Peak
District to pursue her passion for creating stories and screenplays.
In her work, Amy enjoys examining how family dynamics, power dynamics, and
the impact of loss and trauma on memory all interact. With her TV drama pilot
VOID, she was selected for the final selection from more than 5000 applicants
for the BBC Writersroom Drama Script Room in 2021. BONE AND FEATHERS,
her most recent drama writing, has been been selected for BBC Drama Room
2023.
Amy has spent the last two years reading scripts for Channel 4 and working in
the Coronation Street script department. She is thrilled to be working on a
brand-new drama as part of BBC Northern Voices 2022.

Alex Clarke

In Alex Clarke's work, ordinary individuals confronting exceptional challenges are
explored. She uses her 20 years of support worker experience to produce television
on people's ability to grow and change. The BBC and Dancing Ledge Productions are
working on the development of her original TV drama REFUGE. She is a writer in
residence at DYSPLA working on her comedy VENUS IN 13. She worked with Adapted
Pictures to adapt the memoir HOW TO BE AUTISTIC for television. Her mentor, Paula
Milne (THE POLITICIAN'S WIFE/THE VIRGIN QUEEN), is helping her produce her
original TV drama, LITTLE DEMONS, as part of The ITV/Dancing Ledge Productions
New Talent Initiative.As part of her BAFTA Writing Mentorship, she is now working
on a new TV comedy with Lisa McGee (SKINT/DERRY GIRLS) as her mentor. She also
worked on the BBC Northern Voice's Scheme dramady project, THE CON MOTHER.
For her drama WAKING BEAUTY, Alex won the BBC's Alfred Bradley Award. Her play
BELOW, which later entered development with Channel Four and Bonafide Pictures,
won a New Writing North/Channel 4 TV Drama Writing Award. Mark Brennan of
United Agents is her agent.

Billie Collins

Manchester-based writer Billie Collins comes from the Wirral. Following
rehearsed readings at the HOME Manchester and Stephen Joseph Theatre, Box
of Tricks Theatre is developing her debut piece, "Too Much World at Once," for a
future season. Together with "Rathbone's Antiques," an original children's
animated series in development with Toastie Animation (with development
money from the BFI's Young Audiences Content Fund), she is currently working
on a new stage project with Thick Skin Theatre. Billie has created audio drama
for BBC Sounds, been nominated for the 2021 Papatango Prize, and been chosen
for the 2020 Script Lab at Film Hub North. She is an Associate Artist at the
Oldham Coliseum Theatre. She enjoys experimenting with genre and writing
tales about queerness, growing up, and the natural world. At the Agency, Maeve
Bolger is Billie's representative.

Daneka Etchells

Carlisle-based writer and performer Daneka Etchells has a disability. They
worked on their play Rogue Comet(s) during their writer-on-attachment with
Box of Tricks' PlayBox 2021/22 programme, which included a rehearsed reading
at HOME. They have written for theatres like Paines Plough, Theatre by the Lake,
and DaDa Fest, and they are now creating Sappho with Emmerson and Ward for
a UK tour in the spring of 2023. Daneka is getting more assistance in creating
their own REEL after participating in BBC North East Voices in the summer of
2021. She successfully completed development programmes with Live Theatre,
Royal Exchange, New Writing North, and Sky Studios. Using disability,
queerness, gender, class, rurality, and technology, Daneka explores sore-thumb
otherness, focusing underrepresented protagonists in grand cosmic tales set in
forgotten locales on the edge of (un)reality. They will begin an MA in Disability
Studies later this year, which will focus on the representation of disability in
television and film.

Jasmin Mandi-Ghomi

Yorkshire is the birthplace and upbringing of British-Iranian author Jasmin
Mandi-Ghomi. Her first full-length piece, MADDY, will have its premiere at the
VAULT Festival in 2020. Her work has previously been performed at the
Southwark Playhouse, the Arcola Theatre, and the North Wall. A virtual showcase
of Jasmin's play Your Vote Will Not Count was the result of her two-year
engagement with Tamasha Theatre Group as one of their budding playwrights
between 2019 and 2020. The Magic of Wild Heather, her most recent play, was
created for the National Theatre's Public Acts and will be presented at Cast
Theatre in August 2021. Jasmin participated in the Sky Writes programme run by
New Writing North over the summer of 2021. She is presently one of the artists
who make up Sheffield Theatres' The Bank Cohort.

Olive Nwosu

Olive Nwosu was chosen by the Institut Français to direct "African Promises" and
is a BAFTA-Pigott Scholar, Alex Sichel Fellow at Columbia University School of
the Arts, and a native of Lagos, Nigeria. Troublemaker, which is currently
streaming on the Criterion Channel, and BIFA-nominated Egngn (Masquerade),
which showed at TIFF 2021 and Sundance 2022, are two award-winning short
films that Olive has written and directed. Olive, a 2022 Sundance Screenwriting
Fellow, is presently working with Film4 on the creation of her debut project. Her
life has been intersectional, spanning several continents and identities, and this
has influenced her art. Her goal is to tell compelling, visually stunning stories
with an African focus.

Liv Parkinson

Writer Liv Parkinson is from Merseyside. When she was an adolescent, Liv
placed second in a short story competition sponsored by Penguin and earned a
playwriting award from the National Theatre. She later pursued a screenwriting
concentration at Westminster Film School. Liv wrote a lot while she was there,
making short films that were shown at festivals like Underwire and Encounters,
winning Best Drama at the Learning on Screen Awards, and receiving a Royal
Television Society Award. Liv recently completed the screenwriting programme
at the National Film and Television School, where she also created a radio play,
two plays for the stage, and a number of short films. Liv's ultimate goal is to work
in television drama. Amy Sparks at United Agents is Liv's agent.

Rory Platt

Writer Rory Platt was born and raised close to Manchester and currently resides
there. He creates genre-defying, eccentric stories about oddballs, loners, and
misfits. police who are not dead. roundabout-dwelling survivalists. Aristocratic
murderers. vampires in Manchester. In the Southwark Playhouse, Theatre503,
the Hope Mill Theatre, the Pleasance, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, his
theatrical works have been presented. In 2019, the VAULT Festival hosted the
world premiere of his play Without That Certain Thing, a "clever, fast-talking
comedic thriller" with "a razor sharp and hilarious writing" (The Upcoming,
Reviews Hub). He received a Sky Arts scholarship for disabled students to help
pay for his MFA in scriptwriting from the Central School of Speech and Drama,
and he was a part of the Soho Theatre Writers' Lab. He has written several books
for kids, including a collection of poems, all of which were distributed by The
School of Life. He presently has a book of short stories in the works in addition
to writing for television and the theatre.

Sufiyaan Salam

Writer and former animator Sufiyaan Salam resides in Manchester, United
Kingdom. Years before Sean Baker shot Tangerine on an iPhone, he wrote his
first movie at the age of 7, and it was totally captured on a 2-megapixel
cameraphone! Sadly, this early masterwork has since disappeared. After
receiving recognition for a short film he created while earning his BA in English
Literature, Sufiyaan enrolled in the University of Manchester's MA in
Screenwriting programme in 2019. The following year, in 2020—the weekend
before lockdown—he penned his first play, White Girl, which was produced at
the Bunker Theatre. Sufiyaan began working in television in 2020 at Hollyoaks as
a junior storyliner. He currently works for JoJo & Gran Gran as a script editor.
He is now working on a number of projects, including a short film with Madre
Films and a BBC animated children's programme.

Sangetta Shakos

London-born Sangeeta Shakos is a teacher who has spent 30 years in Greater
Manchester and is half Indian and half French. She has a part-time job in a
specialised unit for young people in need, where having an unusual point of view
is helpful. She loves to write character-based, realistic drama, and frequently
finds inspiration in ordinary people or events. Sangeeta's drama "Absconder"
advanced to the Channel 4 course 4Screenwriting final in 2017. She created the
theatre piece "Real Voices" in 2018 to bring attention to concerns affecting today's
youth, such as sexual and criminal exploitation. At this point, more than 25,000
people have viewed the article. The short film "Real Voices" was commissioned
and produced in 2020. (Isaac Who UK). Changes, Sangeeta's comedy-drama
project, was on the Netflix Screenwriters' Fellowship long list for 2021. She is
now collaborating with Northern Voices on a brand-new drama.

Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith, a Wakefield native who currently resides in Manchester, creates
plays that are produced in a variety of settings, from musty bar basements to
renowned theatres. Matthew, a former participant in the Liverpool Everyman
Young Writers programme, collaborates with independent artists, professional
theatre companies, and individuals who have never experienced live
performance. Matthew has recently produced screenplays for the internet
programming of the Oldham Coliseum, for Tameside secondary school pupils,
and for an illustrated bedtime story for the Sandbach Transport Festival.

Chris Sutherland

Chris Sutherland, who now resides in Sheffield and works full-time in mental
health services, is originally from Huddersfield. He devotes the most of his free
time to writing and studying the profession of screenwriting. He considers
himself to be a budding writer and has been nominated for the Northern Writers
Award, Bonafide Film 2021, and Writing for TV with Channel 4. He has been
selected for the Triforce Creative Network and UK TV's "Writerslam" shortlist for
the TV Award 2021. He was chosen for the 2021 "Sky Writes" writing for TV talent
development project from Sky TV and New Writing North. In 2015, he had
already been chosen for Freedom Studios' "Street Voices 5" playwriting
competition.

Kerry Wright

Kerry Wright is a Keighley-based writer and theatre artist. She is originally from
Kent, and before relocating to Bradford a few years ago, she completed an MA in
Writing for Performance at the University of Leeds. Kerry is presently working
on KAILEY, a comedy-drama play based on her experiences growing up with
parents who were in prison. Leeds Council, Bradford Production Hub, and Arts
Council England have all granted her funds in the past. Also, Kerry received the
Live Theatre bursary, which resulted in a performance of KAILEY at the Elevator
Festival '22 of Live Theatre. Developed as a part of the Dream Reality Radio
Program, her brief radio piece SUCH IS LIFE was played at Leeds Playhouse's
Furnace Festival in 2021. Kerry received a DYCP grant from the Arts Council in
2020 to investigate working-class female voices in her writing. She participated
as a writer in Street Voices 8 at Freedom Studios, where her short play POUND
TWENTY had a live-streamed sharing. Kerry is a fan of grime, rap, politics, and
hot sauce on everything in addition to writing and the arts.

References
BBC. (Unknown). BBC Writersroom's Voices 2022 - Northern Voices. [Online]. BBC Writersroom's
Voices 2022 - Northern Voices. Last Updated: 6th July 202. Available at:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/writersroom/entries/0b302a8b-567f-41f9-9351-6728ed8ccf1a
[Accessed 18 March 2023].