Voices 2026 - South

One of my great privileges in BBC Writers is getting to spend time with writers at a moment when their talent, ambition and individuality are coming sharply into focus. Over the past six months, this year's South cohort has developed bold, distinctive television drama projects while also continuing to develop craft and grow as storytellers and creative professionals. The result is a collection of ideas that are entertaining, surprising and impossible to mistake for one another. Each writer here brings a unique perspective to the page, and that diversity of voice is what makes this group so exciting. It has been a pleasure to support them on this stage of their journey, and we can't wait to see what they do next.

Simon Nelson, Development Executive, BBC Writers

SAIKAT AHAMED

Saikat is a British Bangladeshi playwright, screenwriter and actor living in Bristol. As an actor, his work includes East is East, Pennyworth, Life of Pi and playing Tinkerbell at The National Theatre. In 2013 Saikat wrote his first stage play; THE TIGER AND THE MOUSTACHE which drew on his Bangladeshi heritage and toured nationally to critical acclaim. He followed it up with STRICTLY BALTI, commissioned by Travelling Light Theatre, which played the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Alchemy Festival (The Southbank Centre), toured the UK and made the Guardian Readers' List of Top Plays of 2015. Saikat has received commissions; THREE KINGS (Travelling Light), HANSEL AND GRETEL (Insane Root Theatre Company) and an epic poem, BRISTOL ARGONAUTICA (Bristol Old Vic, Ferment). He has written for radio, TELLING TALES (BBC Asian Network), worked as a dramaturg and has been collaborating with a production company on adapting his stage play, Strictly Balti for the small screen. 

In 2025 Saikat wrote and performed his most personal show, IN SEARCH OF GOLDONI, the final part of his British Bangladeshi Trilogy. The play, directed by Alix Harris and produced by Beyond Face, was a dark comedy set in Venice looking at grief, cultural expectations and the glory that is gelato and was a critical success; it "swells with universal poignancy and insight... (and was both) devastating and invigorating" PRSD 

Saikat's writing draws on personal experience, cultural heritage, and a keen eye for the complexities of modern life. He aims to create stories that build bridges across different communities and generations, exploring identity, belonging and family in all its' forms and all infused with a wry sense of humour. 

Saikat was previously recipient of BBC Norman Beaton Fellowship, has been Associate Artist at Bristol Old Vic and has absolutely loved being part of the BBC Voices scheme.

Saikat is currently seeking representation as a playwright and screenwriter.

CHRISTABEL CLARK

Christabel is a screenwriter and actor from Sussex. Following a Philosophy degree at Cambridge with a drama school training at Drama Centre, Christabel has a tendency to write rounded characters and place them in unusual situations as a way to process the weirdness of life.  

Christabel gravitates towards stories of the underdog, enjoys humour as a vehicle to shine light on society’s problems and has written a six-part series about time travelling vikings. Christabel has a background in production and loves being a practical part of bringing stories to life, having done so for several of her short films and one pilot.  

Christabel is currently developing her darkly comedic sci-fi about the end of the world, which originated during her time on the BBC Writers Voices scheme, as well as two further drama pilots and a comedy feature about a sentient tea cup. 

Christabel is currently seeking representation

SHARON CLARK

Sharon is a dramaturg and a writer for stage and screen. She has written over 14 plays which have been shortlisted for the Yale Drama Prize and the PapaTango Prize. Her play, PLOW, was awarded a Bruntwood Judge’s Prize for Playwriting.  

Whilst Literary Producer at the Bristol Old Vic she was the dramaturg for the theatre’s main stage and studio productions; has worked in a freelance capacity with playwrights such as Eno Mfon, Bea Roberts, Miriam Battye and Edson Burton and been dramaturgical advisor for the choreographer Akram Khan on his internationally touring production of Jungle Book Revisited. 

She has previously worked as a writer/dramaturg with Theatre 503, National Theatre Studio, RSC, Curve Leicester, Arcola, Theatr Iolo, New Diorama, Bath Theatre Royal, Sherman Cymru, Theatre Uncut and Watford Palace Theatre.   

She is founder and Creative Director of Raucous, a site responsive immersive theatre company that fuses performance, music, film, AR, AI, binaural sound and creative technology. Her explorations into making theatre with digital technology have led to fellowships with the RSC & Magic Leap, SWCTN and Creative Clusters. For Raucous she has written mid-large scale immersive productions THE STICK HOUSE, ICE ROAD, THE PRICK & THE STING, THE WHALE and THE UNDROWNED. She is a resident at Bristol’s Pervasive Media Studio.  

In 2023 she was chosen as a participant in the Channel 4 New Voices scheme, and mentored by Kudos films. She has also previously worked as a director with Aardman Animations on the BBC virtual reality film, IS ANNA OKAY? Her short films include POLAROID and KICKING TYRES. She is currently working on her first feature film.

WILLIAM DREW

William Drew was born in Washington, DC, and lived in Brighton for several years, but is currently based in London. He’s written extensively for games, theatre, and immersive experiences, including for major IPs such as Batman and John le Carré’s Smiley novels with Spyscape and The Ink Factory, respectively. He was a Coney Associate for many years and has been an Associate Writer with High Tide. His short HUNGRY LIKE was included in Papatango’s Isolated but Open and is published by Nick Hern. The horror-comedy podcast series he developed, THE PEOPLE OUTSIDE, ran for two series and featured Elf Lyons, Marcelo Dos Santos, Bella Heesom, and Bourgeois and Maurice, amongst many others. His career began at the Royal Court Theatre’s International Department producing plays in translation from around the world. He has translated plays from French by a range of playwrights including Alfred Jarry, Olivier Choinière, and Lionel Hamelin. 

His first pilot script, MONSTROUS ACTS, progressed through to the Scripted shortlist in the BBC’s Open Call, placing it in the top 1% of all eligible scripts. He is now developing his second pilot through BBC Voices, and a feature. He is currently seeking representation.

SIMON DREW

Simon Drew is a Cornish filmmaker writing and directing darkly comic tales set on the fringes of society. With a background in commercials, Simon has been writing, directing, shooting and editing promos, documentaries, music videos and fashion films for twenty years through his production company Kaspar Films with work screened at the BFI and National Portrait Gallery. 

His feature screenplay THE GARDEN OF ENGLAND, following shipwrecked refugees walking from Dover to London, won the 27th Euroscript Screenwriting Competition and reached the quarter-finals of the Final Draft Big Break and Shore Scripts competitions. The feature screenplay that earned him a place on BBC Voices, THE ZOO, is a psychological drama about a young disabled woman trapped in a Cornish council house with her unhinged father and a nest of sentient ants. His short TEA FOR TWO, about a couple poisoning each other at the breakfast table, won the Audience Award at the Bornshorts International Film Festival and his latest short UNTOUCHED, a Black Mirror style rom-com about an estranged couple reconnecting in a VR world, is about to start its festival run. From BBC Voices Simon is now writing ZELAH, a TV series following undercover cops infiltrating the Westcountry rave scene of the early 90s.

JO GATFORD

Jo Gatford is an award-winning writer-of-many-things from Brighton. She has over 70 short fiction and poetry publications, many of them prize-winning, and has been commissioned to contribute work for anthologies by Routledge and the Shakespeare Institute. Her novel WHITE LIES was published by Legend Press in 2014, and her chapbook THE WOMAN’S PART was published by Stanchion in 2023. She is also a playwright and director, and was selected for the 2026 New Writing South/Chichester Festival Theatre Playwrights Cohort to develop a new play, AMELIA EARHART IS NOT AT HOME. She has been an editor and writing tutor for a decade, with a specialism in supporting neurodivergent creatives.  

Jo’s historical drama pilot FREE TRADERS won development funding from Centerframe, was a finalist in the Cambridge Script Festival, London Best Script Award, and made the top 1.8% of the 2025 BBC Open Call. After being selected for the 2026 BBC Voices programme, she has been developing a new series, TRASH WITCH: a comedy drama about staying weird and keeping faith in a world that thinks you’re a walking disaster. She is also working on a variety of other script projects, including a comedy horror about perimenopausal rage, a biopic about a musician with a death curse, and an absurdist play about the Pied Piper. She’s a consummate people-watcher and enjoys writing about what happens when we decide to break the patterns of familial, historical, and societal expectations. She is currently seeking representation to write across TV, film, theatre and literary publishing. 

SARAH MILTON

Sarah is an award-nominated playwright, screenwriter and performer. Her plays have been performed at The Royal Court, Soho Theatre, Park Theatre, King's Head Theatre, VAULT festival, Theatre N16, and with the Old Vic New Voices. She is an Associate Artist of Bruised Sky Productions. Her plays TUMBLE TUCK, LUCY LIGHT, '4' and THE NIGHT TELLA are all published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.  

Sarah was 1 of 12 writers on the 2019 Channel 4 Screenwriting programme led by Philip Shelley. In the same year, she was nominated for an Edinburgh TV Festival New Voice Award in the Stage to Screen category for Tumble Tuck. 

Sarah’s feature film adaptation of her play Lucy Light placed as a quarter finalist in the international Shore Scripts 2020 Feature Film competition and was shortlisted for the Screen & Story 2021 Film Festival Screenplay competition.

Her feature length film PROJECT BABY was commissioned by Reel One Entertainment in 2021. It was released in Europe, the US and Canada in 2023 and is available to watch on Amazon Prime. Her short film SCOFFED - commissioned and developed by ManChild Films - was released in Spring 2023 and was officially selected for and/or placed as a Semi Finalist in several international short film competitions. 

In 2025, out of nearly 6000 scripts, Sarah's script PA(RENTAL) was shortlisted for the BBC Scripted programme. She is delighted to have been a part of BBC Voices 2026. Sarah is currently open to discussing representation for her writing.

SANTANA K NADASAN

Santana K Nadasan is a London and Hertfordshire based writer with a passion for cosmic horror, tense drama and black comedy. 

From grand and decadent societies with rotten foundations to perpetual failures with god-like ambition, Santana creates a variety of dark, profound, strange and comedic stories that attempt to draw from the vastness of the human experience and the weirdness of it all.

He has written the pilot for a mystery horror TV series called WAYPOINT; about odd happenings beneath an old shopping centre and the framework for a dark anthology series exploring cult of personality and artificial godhood. He has a background in animation, digital art and production experience on several international feature films. 

Inspirations include the cerebral horror of the 1980s, cryptic lore of FromSoftware’s catalog, ancient world history and the works of writers such as Shane Meadows, Vince Gilligan, H.P. Lovecraft and Kentaro Miura.

Santana is currently writing an original crime series about power structures within insular communities which was first developed on the BBC voices programme. 

He is seeking representation. 

MIKE POWELL

Mike is a screenwriter from the Isle of Wight, now living in Berkshire. He specialises in emotionally intelligent stories with strong, propulsive genre leanings. He was selected as one of All3Media and the TV Foundation’s inaugural New Writers’ Collective, is a multiple Nicholl Fellowship finalist and has been shortlisted for 4Screenwriting and BBC Studios Writers’ Academy. Mike is currently developing multiple projects across TV and film. 

He can also do a no-handed cartwheel. 

Mike is represented by Ellen Gallagher at Casarotto Ramsay & Associates.

LENA STAHL

Lena Stahl is an actor and writer, originally from Paderborn in Germany, who has lived in the UK for over a decade. She trained as an actor at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London and studied improv comedy at the Free Association. 

She is a member of The House of Bollix!, an award-winning theatre company specialising in drag theatre. Their work has been staged at the Edinburgh Fringe, The Space and the Vault Festival, where they were awarded with the Spirit of the Festival Award in 2023.

Lena’s first feature film script, EVIE, an action comedy about lorry drivers on the European motorways, made it to the top 1.8% of entries at the BBC Writers open call in 2025 and gained her a spot on BBC Voices 2026.  

She was also selected for the 2025/26 BFI Network Outline programme, where she developed TANK LIFE, a short film about a marine biologist with a suffocating fear of the ocean. During her time at BBC Voices, she created her dystopian sci-fi workplace comedy pilot ALL YOU CAN SLEEP, which she is excited to develop further. 

ALICE VINTEN

Alice Vinten is a former Metropolitan Police constable turned award-winning author and screenwriter. She has written two bestselling real crime books – ON THE LINE (Two Roads Books) and THE REAL HAPPY VALLEY (Transworld) which was nominated for BOOK OF THE YEAR at the 2024 TRUE CRIME AWARDS.

In 2026, as well as qualifying for the BBC Voices programme, she made the longlist of the UK FILM FESTIVAL TV Pilot Competition with her dystopian script JUMP DAY. 

Her work is heavily inspired by both the misconduct and injustice she witnessed during her decade in policing, and the darker side of life she encountered on the streets of London. After experiencing sexual discrimination and harassment during her police career, Alice is determined to create gripping TV that highlights the constant battle that is being a woman in a man’s world. She is a proud feminist, and strives to centre women’s voices in her writing, especially focusing on giving a voice to ‘invisible’ women. 

Alice has previously worked with several screenwriters and production companies as a policing consultant and is now actively pursuing a career in screenwriting. She is drawn to dark comedy, dystopia and stories about women flipping the narrative on the patriarchy. 

She is thrilled to be working on a new crime thriller, POINT OF IMPACT (after a devastating traffic collision, a female police officer is forced to make a choice between her blue family and doing the right thing) as part of BBC Voices 2026.

She is currently seeking representation.

JADA WALLACE-MITCHELL

Jada Wallace-Mitchell is a London-based screenwriter and actress developing character-driven dramas. Her work focuses on grounded and emotional storytelling that explores how systems shape personal identity and choice. 

Jada is currently developing her feature script INCUBATOR, set in Croydon and following Carla who is pushed to take responsibility for a case that forces her to question the institution that she has devoted herself to. 

ANNA WESTALL

Anna Westall is a Brighton-based screenwriter asking the big philosophical questions, such as: what would you do if your husband replaced you with a toilet? Blessed with a slightly sinister sense of humour and hailing from a family who laughed every single time somebody fell over, her style is a mix of dark humour, slapstick and soul-crushing despair. 

Anna co-produced, wrote and acted in JUST ATE - an independent feature based on her own experiences as a head chef with an eating disorder and is currently an associate artist at Crave Theatre Company, a charitable organisation working with professional actors in recovery from addiction. As part of BBC Voices 2026, Anna is currently developing PATSY - a 60-minute dark comedy drama about a con artist trapped with the best liars imaginable: a 'happy' family at Christmas.

When Anna isn't writing, she's caring for her daughter, a neurodivergent firework of a four-year-old who thinks that Anna is a genius. She is currently seeking representation (Anna, not her daughter.)