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Meet the 13 writers who took part in our second Writers' Access Group and find out what they've been up to during the scheme and since it concluded.

The writers who took part in our second Writers' Access Group were announced back in October 2020. The Writers’ Access Group is a 1-year development scheme that gives talented disabled writers the chance to expand their writing skills and to be offered opportunities in TV and radio at the 鲍鱼tv including 鲍鱼tv Daytime, 鲍鱼tv Radio, Continuing Dramas, C鲍鱼tv and CBeebies. 

The group met, roughly once a month (all sessions were held online due to Covid), with targeted training and development including workshops, masterclasses, introductions and networking events. In addition to this, they were each paired with a script editor to work with across the year to develop and write an original pilot spec' script.

The group (together with the first Writers' Access Group) were also offered the chance to be involved in working on new 鲍鱼tv One drama Ralph And Katie, a spin-off of Peter Bowker’s hit series, The A Word. Five co-writers were announced in February 2021.

Find out more about the whole group below.

Read about Mandy Redvers-Rowe's experience as part of the Writers' Access Group

Watch The Break on 鲍鱼tv Three - several episodes were written by members of the Writers' Access Group

Details of how to apply for the next Writers Access Group will be announced later in 2022, where writers will be selected via an open submission window.

Adam Fenton is a neurodiverse, LGBTQIA+, working class writer-performer from the north of England. They graduated from drama school in 2019 and have since been working as an actor and writer in theatre. Over the last few years Adam has worked with Graeae Theatre Company, Dada Fest, Theatre by the Lake, Oldham Coliseum and others creating work online and for live performance.

In 2021 Adam won The Evening Standard’s Future Theatre Fund award for Acting, using this springboard to further develop his own play ‘//Tuning In//’, a piece exploring disability prejudice, especially around Tourette’s Syndrome, utilising the spontaneity and imagination of his tics.

As a writer, Adam has part of The Royal Court Introduction to Playwrighting Group (2020/21), Box of Tricks - Playbox (2021/22), and Dada Fest - Incubate (2021).

Amy Trigg is an actor and writer from Essex. She was the first wheelchair user to graduate from a performance course at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. Her acting credits include work with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare’s Globe, The Stephen Joseph Theatre, Nottingham Playhouse, 鲍鱼tv and Universal. 

As a writer, Amy’s first full length play Reasons You Should(n't) Love Me was joint winner of the inaugural Women’s Prize for Playwriting 2020 (Ellie Keel Productions and Paines Plough) and premiered at the Kiln Theatre in May 2021. 

Her essay An Ode to Improv (and Poehler and Fey) features in the book ‘Feminists Don’t Wear Pink (and other lies)’. She won Colchester New Comedian of the Year 2016 for her one woman sketch The Rebrand. 

Amy is a writer for the upcoming 鲍鱼tv series Ralph and Katie (produced by ITV Studios) and is developing original projects for stage and screen with various production companies.  

Amy is also currently part of both the 鲍鱼tv Writersroom TV Drama Writers’ Programme (2021/22) and Drama Room (2020/21). She was recently part of the Royal Court Introduction to Playwriting Group 2020/21 and 4Screenwriting 2021. 

Born in the exotic wilds of Watford, Angela Clarke was the first in her extended family to make it to university. There she learned entertaining your mates with tall tales was called ‘creative writing’. And that all the famous authors she studied were dead. That didn’t seem like a healthy career plan, so she took a job in fashion. After about a decade, her feet stopped working. Though it actually took doctors six years to work out she had the rare connective tissue disorder Hypermobility Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), it fits better with her narrative arc if we say that this was the moment she started writing.

Angela is the bestselling author of crime thrillers including On My Life (Hachette), Trust Me (HarperCollins), Watch Me (HarperCollins), Follow Me (HarperCollins), and the humorous memoir Confessions of a Fashionista (Penguin Random House).

For screen, Angela has written 2 x 11’ episodes for the second series of JoJo & Gran Gran (CBeebies), and one episode for the fifth series of 鲍鱼tv Three’s The Break (鲍鱼tv Studios). She wrote and performed the comedy short The Masseuse Who Pulled My Arm Out (鲍鱼tv Edinburgh Festival Stage / iPlayer).

Current projects include: Creative Consultant for Anisha, Accidental Detective (C鲍鱼tv), 10 x 30’ children’s mystery adapted from popular novels; Co-Writer for Edge of Chaos (FilmWave), 4 x 60’ original returning crime drama; Concept & Lead Writer for Agency (SunnyMarch), 12 x 30’ original returning drama. She is one of six writers selected for the 2021 鲍鱼tv Children’s In-House Mentorship, and is also currently on the Doctors shadow scheme.

For audio, Angela wrote 1 x 15’ episode for Mallory Towers (鲍鱼tv Sounds).

A career high for the bookish young kid who read every Enid Blyton in her local portacabin library.

Caron Brand has enjoyed a varied career as an actress for many years. Following an accident in 2010, she faced years of surgery and many complications, ending with her having a prosthetic hip and limited mobility. Having always had a passion for writing, she found her time spent recovering, became her time to put pen to paper.

Her piece for the Monologue Slam Manchester - written and performed by herself, reached the semi-finals. Having gained an entry into the Tron Theatre100’s Summer Festival, Caron went onto write several short plays for street theatre. One of these pieces, which was adapted for TV, was long-listed for the 鲍鱼tv Drama Room. 

Her entry for series five of The Break (鲍鱼tv Three) earned her a commission and she is currently working on a piece for Doctors (鲍鱼tv One), which could go into production later in the year.

One of her plays has recently reached a second stage read with The Graeae New Writing Department.

Caron has been busy polishing up her skillset with courses such as the John Yorke story for Screenwriting online course.

Karen Featherstone writes screenplays, stage plays and fiction. She has an MA in Screenwriting from the University of the Arts and she is a former storyliner for ITV’s Coronation Street and Emmerdale. Her writing has featured on Channel 4, and at theatres around the UK, including the National Theatre Studio, at Hampstead Theatre, for Oldham Coliseum, and as part of a Little Pieces of Gold showcase at Southwark Playhouse. 

After a brief stint in stand-up (sit-down; she’s mobility-impaired!), in 2019 she wrote and performed her first solo show. She’s been shortlisted for 鲍鱼tv’s The Break, for LA Production’s Moving On, for a 鲍鱼tv Children’s In-House Mentorship and for the current EastEnders’ shadow scheme. 

For radio, her play The End of Sleep was a finalist in 鲍鱼tv’s Alfred Bradley Bursary Award for radio drama. She was most recently a writer for Naked Productions’ United Kingdoms episode on the theme of fearing for Radio 4, a programme which was The Guardian Guide’s Pick of the week, and Radio 4’s drama of the week. 

An alumna of Graeae Theatre’s year-long Write To Play initiative, and a mentee of Manchester-based DANC, her play Essential Needs, a comedy drama about the orgasm gap, was staged in Manchester in October. As a fiction writer, she’s a Northern Writers’ Award winner. Her stories, including in the YA and horror genres, have been published widely, including in Mslexia, by Retreat West books, Otranto House, Comma Press and the Daily Mirror.

Kate Wickens’ writing career began with a short film about a female getaway driver, The Fishdance Kid, which was commissioned by ScreenSouth/Film UK and shown as part of the London Film Festival’s Best of UK Shorts. She used her son’s nap times  to write a novel Cursed Love Blues about a misunderstood goddess, which got to number one on Amazon Hot New Releases for two minutes in 2017.  She has recently written a stage play, Deaf Frets, about the problems of dating a wannabe gangster. Her blog about being a deaf writer can be found at

Since beginning her journey into television writing in 2018, she was one of 8 commissioned writers for Series 5 of The Break and her first drama spec script about modern day witches, Strange Inheritance, has been optioned by LA Productions.  As part of Writers’ Access Group, she has completed another spec script Eden about a deaf teenager seeking the truth behind her mother’s death.   She is currently developing ideas for a new crime drama series with Other Productions and she has just been accepted on the Triple C/Screen Skills Mentoring programme.

As a writer, she has a fondness for subverting expectations, especially where gender and disability are concerned, and she likes honing in on the small funny quirks that make us human.

An award-winning stand-up comedian and writer, last year Laurence Clark was selected for 4screenwriting 2021 alongside the Writers Access Group. He is a finalist in the Triforce UKTV Writerslam (out of 1600 submissions) and consequently has a pilot in development for UKTV. He’s completed The Dumping Ground shadow scheme and is writing an episode for season 10. He’s briefly been a storyliner on Hollyoaks and Coronation Street. 

His sitcom pilot with Objective Fiction and thriller with Lime Pictures were both previously put into paid development with Channel 4. His play Cured, about a young, disabled Scouser who manipulates a pilgrimage to Lourdes in order to lose his virginity, won an Unlimited commission and will be produced in 2023. 

He also wrote additional material and performed in Birds of Paradise’s critically-acclaimed play Purposeless Movements about 4 guys with cerebral palsy at Edinburgh International Festival 2019. In October 2021 he started the EastEnders shadow scheme. 

He is also the Chair of TripleC, a Community Interest Company led by disabled artists which runs the Disabled Artists Networking Community (DANC) project. This provides an extensive programme of networking events, mentoring and masterclasses for disabled writers and other artists. 

He has an MA in Disability Studies and a PhD in Molecular Biology / Computing. He was born in Manchester but is destined to live in Liverpool with his wife and two children forever because he married a Scouser!

Leanna Benjamin is an emerging playwright and script writer from Leeds.  Leanna is a Graeae Theatre Write to Play alumna and a former West Yorkshire Playhouse Fuse writer. She is a passionate storyteller, performer, jewellery designer and human rights activist.

Leanna enjoys using her creativity to share stories that inspire, encourage and to provoke a change within our society. 

Leanna won first prize at the 2013 Ilkley Literature Festival for her hilarious monologue Sister Joy. In 2016 Leanna was invited to take part in the WANTED project as part of the Transform Festival at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Leanna wrote and  performed her piece I Smile at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, at WOW (Women of the World) festival Bradford and at Southbank Centre. 

Leanna was one of the writers for the 鲍鱼tv Writersroom Northern Voices 2020 and is currently working on her first TV spec script as part of this one year-long development programme.  Leanna recently had her first commission Soul Food performed online as part of the Burn Bright Theatre’s Better In Person 2 showcase. Leanna is working on her second commission with the Graeae theatre and will be released later this year.

Lizzie Watson is a screenwriter based in Leeds. She likes to explore emotive and character-driven stories, with funny moments throw in! Lizzie is particularly interested in the small ways that characters might express themselves - the way they enter a room, the way they might stumble on a particular word. Lizzie has found television drama to be vital to her development and engagement with the world and hopes to write scripts for viewers like her.

Lizzie is a writer for 鲍鱼tv1’s Ralph and Katie, the spin-off of Peter Bowker’s The A Word. For 2022 she has been selected for the EastEnders New Writers scheme as well as ITV's Original Voices initiative, where she'll write a shadow script for Emmerdale and receive 12-month mentorship.

Lizzie graduated from the University of Leeds in 2020, with a Distinction in the MA Writing for Performance and Publication programme. This was funded by a full fee Excellence Scholarship. A member of the Leeds Playhouse Writers Group and RTYDS New Directions scheme, Lizzie also collaborates as a Dramaturg and Director in theatre.

She is represented by Mark Brennan at United Agents.

Mandy Redvers-Rowe has written for television, radio and stage. Most recently her monologue for Love Liverpool was part of a new production at the Playhouse in August. She’s working with Justine Potter from Savvy and CanCan Productions, developing a new script Getting Even, funded by Manchester Independence Festival.

She’s one of the writers on the CBeebies series Biff, Chip and Kipper, available now on 鲍鱼tv iPlayer. She’s developing a new verbatim theatre piece Shielded in partnership with The Everyman & Playhouse, funded by the Arts Council. She is part of the Graeae Beyond Programme.

Mandy’s TV drama, Second Sight, appeared in series 11 of Jimmy McGovern’s Moving On (鲍鱼tv1) in March 2020 and was The Times Critics’ Choice.

During lockdown she had several online commissions with both The Everyman & Playhouse Theatres including A Love Letter To Merseyrail as part of the Love, Liverpool: An A To Z of Hope, and SnapShots with Northern Broadsides.               

In 2019 her show, Measuring Up, was developed in partnership with the New Works Department at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre and funded by the Arts Council. She also wrote her first radio play Blind School (co-written with Sarah McDonald-Hughes) which broadcast on Radio 4, and tutored a course Writing for Performance for The Arvon, with playwright Tim Crouch.   

She has an MA in Creative Writing from LJMU. She has had play readings at both The Young Vic and The Royal Exchange, and various small commissions.

Robbie Curran is a neurodivergent actor and writer from Walthamstow, London. After studying Drama and English at Birmingham University, he became the first autistic actor to graduate from the Oxford School of Drama. Robbie’s acting credits stretch across the UK, and included projects  with Soho Theatre, Nottingham Playhouse, Turbine Theatre, Selladoor, Wildcard Theatre and the 鲍鱼tv.

As a writer, Robbie performed his debut play Thomas at VAULT Festival 2019 with Snapper Theatre, which channelled his experiences of growing up diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. Directed by Lucy Foster, it featured in the Evening Standard as one of their ‘Must See' shows of the festival, and is currently in the early stages of planning for a regional tour of England.

His second play Turnip, a love story between the Creator of the Universe…and some guy, reached the second round of Papatango 2020, and has been workshopped with Sean Turner (Artistic Director of the Trinity Theatre, Tunbridge Wells).

As part of the Writers Access Group, Robbie wrote his first television spec script Aspirational - a comedy drama. His short play Tuning In was shortlisted for Radio 3's The Verb and he is currently on his first TV writing job developing an episode for 鲍鱼tv’s Doctors.

Robbie is co-artistic director of Neurospectacular - a collective of neurodivergent artists, a member of DANC’s neurodivergent focus group, and a co-ordinator for the Alumni Group of Soho Theatre Writers Lab, which he trained on in 2018/19. Robbie will soon start on Vital Xposure's 'Wellspring' programme, in which he will be facilitated to build a relationship as a playwright with either the Bush, Theatre503, Paines Plough or the Hampstead Theatre.

In short, Robbie is interested in creating unique work that is as funny as it is moving, whilst hopefully sharing more positive representation of neurodiversity along the way.

Shahid Iqbal Khan’s foray into creative writing began with a short play for Carol Godby’s Festival of Plays (Met Theatre, Bury). He joined the Manchester Muslim Writers’ group not long after, a collective that inspired him to explore and compose poetry.

He was Associate Artist for Phizzical Productions and is an alumnus of Graeae Theatre’s prestigious Write To Play programme.

His next play, 10 Nights, ran from October 7 to November 6 at the Bush Theatre. It is a co-production between Bush Theatre, Graeae Theatre and Tamasha Theatre.

Theatre credits: The Smile of Despair (Attenborough Arts Centre), Stardust (Belgrade Theatre), Never Been Away (2020: Collection 1) (Tara Theatre).

Audio credits: The Return (That Podcast) (English Touring Theatre and Fremantle’s Storyglass), Bhavika (Connections) (Naked Productions), Brandlesholme (Sheltering) (鲍鱼tv Radio 4).

Shahid Iqbal Khan is also part of Writers Group, co-led by Royal Court Theatre and Deafinitely Theatre 20/21.

William Barrington is a writer and filmmaker. In 2018, he graduated from the University of Winchester with a BA in Film Production. Whist studying, William wrote and produced several short films, some of which were nominated for awards in film festivals across the country. 

After leaving Winchester, William co-founded Candy Apple Grove Productions, a small company which produces wedding and cooperate videos.

William studied for an MA in Screenwriting at the Royal Holloway University and graduated in 2019. 

He is now a researcher in non-scripted television, working on both productions and development projects. During his time in development, William has worked on pitches for all major British broadcasters, and some American ones as well. 

But William keeps writing his own material too.

In 2021 William wrote the episode Losing It for the fifth series of 鲍鱼tv Three’s The Break (鲍鱼tv Studios) and took part in a thinkBIGGER scheme where he was mentored by Jack Thorne. 

Currently, he is developing a script for Doctors (鲍鱼tv One).