Asian Writers Group – 18 May 2022

This month’s guests: Annie George, Sanjay Lago, and Uma Nada-Rajah

Join us for our Asian Writers Group on Wednesday 18 May at 7pm-9:00pm.

Please be mindful when booking. This is a group for Asian writers based in Scotland (or who, pre-COVID, would have normally been resident in Scotland), the UK and Ireland.

For writers of East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, West Asian, and/or mixed heritage

Our Asian Writers Group returns on 18 May with not one but three guest speakers: Annie George, Sanjay Lago, and Uma Nada-Rajah, in partnership with the National Theatre of Scotland! These theatre-makers will be talking about their unique paths to writing for performance, overcoming unexpected challenges in their careers, bringing memoir to life, their approaches to foregrounding controversial topics on stage and screen, tips for emerging writers, and more.

This event is open to UK- and Ireland-based writers of Asian heritage as well as to Scotland-based Asian writers specifically.

About Annie

Annie George is a writer, theatre maker and occasional filmmaker, recently described by The Scotsman as ‘one of Scotland’s most powerful writer-performers’. She was awarded the Scottish Book Trust’s Ignite Fellowship in 2019 and the 2016 Inspiring Scotland bursary (Scottish Book Trust/Saltire Society). Often using memoir, her work is poetic and political. Recent productions include ‘Twa’, a collaboration with visual artist Flore Gardner, and the solo shows ‘Home is Not the Place’ and ‘The Bridge’. Annie was born in Kerala in India, lives in Prestonpans, and has worked in Scottish theatre for thirty years.

About Sanjay

Sanjay Lago is a Glasgow based Neurodiverse Scottish Indian Actor, Writer and Facilitator. A graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Sanjay has been within the Arts Industry for over 10 years, working stage and screen. He is interested in devising and creating theatre with a message or a powerful theme. His work has mainly looked at autobiography, with themes such as race, sexuality and mental health. He enjoys writing and directing as well as performing. He has a strong passion in getting diverse voices heard within the arts sector and creating spaces to grow and learn. He was on the Soho Theatre Writers’ Lab in 2020/21 and his play he wrote, “Jalebi”, was longlisted for the Tony Crazy Playwrighting Award. He has been developing his one man show “I Wasn’t Okay”, a piece that looks at male suicide in the South Asian community. He has worked with theatre companies Bijli and Tamasha and during 2020 had his first pieces of poetry published with the support of the Scottish BAME Writers Network.

About Uma

Uma Nada-Rajah is a playwright and nurse based in Kilbarchan, Scotland. She was a member of the Young Writers’ Program at the Traverse Theatre and a recipient of a New Playwrights’ Award from Playwrights’ Studio Scotland. Uma was one of the BBC’s Scottish Voices 2020, and was also recently the Starter Female Political Comedy Writer-in-Residence at the National Theatre of Scotland. She is currently under commission to the Almeida Theatre and her first full-length play Exodus will be produced by the National Theatre of Scotland as a part of the Edinburgh Festival 2022.

Theatre includes: The Watercooler (Traverse Theatre); Toy Plastic Chicken (Òran Mór/ Traverse Theatre).

The Details

• There is a max of 30 spaces.
• Registration is free!
• This event will be hosted online using Zoom (instructions will be sent to participants closer to the date).
• The event includes a 10-min comfort break.
• Our events are very popular and have a waitlist. If you have registered for a ticket but then are unable to attend please do let us know so we can offer it to another person on the waitlist. Thank you!
• All SBWN events will adhere to our safer spaces policy. You can learn more about our policy here.