Tony Jordan - Tony was a street trader for many years, before writing his first script in 1990. His first job was on BBC 1's long running drama 'EastEnders'. He went on to write over 250 episodes - and become the Series Consultant - before going on to write for diverse other shows and eventually creating his own formats including highly successful BBC show 'Hustle' and co-creating 'Life On Mars'.

Tony recently founded Red Planet Pictures, a new television production company, whose first commission 'Holby Blue' is currently showing on BBC1. 'Moving Wallpaper' and 'Echo Beach', created by Tony and co-produced with Kudos Film and Television, was shown on ITV earlier in the year.  The Red Planet writing competition launched at last years festival, was a huge success and will be re-launched again at this years festival. 

Christopher Hampton - Christopher's plays, musicals and translations have garnered three Tony Awards, two Olivier Awards and the New York Theatre Critics Circle Award, while prizes for his film and television work include an Oscar, two BAFTAs and a Special Jury Prize at Cannes.  Plays include 'The Talking Cure', 'White Chameleon', 'Tales From Hollywood', 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses', 'Treats', 'Savages', 'The Philanthropist' and 'Total Eclipse'. He wrote the book and lyrics (with Don Black) for the musicals 'Sunset Boulevard' and 'Dracula' and the libretto for the Philip Glass operas 'Waiting For The Barbarians' and 'Appomattox'. He has translated extensively from Chekhov, Ibsen, Moliere, Odon von Horvath and Yasmina Reza (including Art and Lifex3).  His screenplays include 'The Quiet American', 'Mary Reilly', 'Total Eclipse', 'Dangerous Liaisons', 'Carrington', 'The Secret Agent' and 'Imagining Argentina', the last three of which he also directed. His latest screenplay was for the film Atonement, which won both the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards for best Picture.

Vadim Jean - Vadim started work as a runner on Stormy Monday (Mike Figgis) after graduating from Warwick University with a degree in History.  His first feature was 'Leon the Pig Farmer', no budget but plenty of "chutzpah" which went on to win the Chaplin Award for best feature at the Edinburgh Film Festival and the International Critics Prize at the Venice Film Festival.  Other films he directed 'Clockwork Mice', 'The Real Howard Spitz', 'One More Kiss' and 'Jiminy Glick in La-La Land' before going on to do BAFTA award winning 'The Hogfather' and most recently 'The Colour of Magic' both for SkyTV.

Tanya Seghatchian - Tanya was appointed Head of the UK Film Council's Development Fund in 2007 and has over 10 years of industry experience behind her. She was one of the producers of the first four instalments of the phenomenally popular 'Harry Potter' film franchise. With fellow filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski she established independent company Apocalypso Pictures which ultimately led to the award-winning 'My Summer of Love'. As a consultant to Heyday Films, working with fellow Harry Potter associates David Heyman (Producer) and Steve Kloves (Writer/Director) she is exec producing the screen adaptation of 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time' for Warner Bros.

Kate Leys - Kate is a feature film script editor who works on projects at all stages of development from first outline to pre-production. As well as working with screenwriters and producers she advises commercial and public film financiers including DNA, Celador, The Weinstein Co, Slingshot and Media Europe; teaches post-graduate script development and screenwriting; and evaluates screenwriting courses for Skillset. She was head of development at Film Four for 5 years where she was involved in films including 'Four Weddings and a Funeral', 'Orphans', 'East is East' and 'Girl with a Pearl Earring'.

Dr. Raj Persaud - Raj is a Consultant Psychiatrist at The Maudsley Hospital in South London and is Gresham Professor for Public Understanding of Psychiatry, he presents 'All in the Mind' on BBC Radio 4 and has written many books on self help including ‘Simply Irresistable', ‘Staying Sane' and ‘From the Edge of the Couch'. After a very successful and entertaining session at the Screenwriters' Festival 2007, Dr Persaud returns to give yet another enlightening glimpse into the mind of a screenwriter.

Kay Mellor - Kay started her career by forming the Yorkshire Theatre Company with two friends from Bretton Hall. They began touring plays which Kay had written. Kay was then offered the part of Dr. Baker in ‘The Practice’, made by Granada TV. She followed this with a part as a policewoman in the Granada program ‘Albion Market’, and she ended up as their script editor until the show ended. Scriptwriter on ‘Brookside’ for C4 in 1989 before going on to create series’ such as ‘Families’, ‘Just Us’ and the hit drama ‘Band of Gold’. In 1995 Kay wrote the very popular series ‘Playing the Field’ and an adaptation of ‘Jane Eyre’ before creating and writing ‘Fat Friends’, ‘Between the Sheets’ and the recent ‘The Chase’. Kay has also written scripts for three feature films; ‘Girls’ Night’ with Brenda Blethyn and Julie Walters, ‘Fanny and Elvis’ with Ray Winstone and Kerry Fox, ‘A Good Thief’ for Granada. In 1998 Kay was awarded the Dennis Potter Award at the Baftas. Kay and her creative team at Rollem Productions are currently in development on a number of new television and theatre projects.

Jane Tranter - Head of BBC Fiction. Jane became Controller of BBC Fiction in October 2006. She leads the group which covers Drama Commissioning, Comedy Commissioning, Programme Acquisitions and BBC Films, covering around £500 million of output over four television channels, as well as being responsible for the accompanying new media activity. Jane commissions all television drama across BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three and BBC Four. This amounts to around 500 hours of drama and a £250 million budget. Recent commissions include: ‘Five Days’, ‘Life on Mars’, ‘Bleak House’, ‘Doctor Who’, ‘Spooks’, ‘To The Ends of the Earth’, ‘Rome’, ‘The Lost Prince’, ‘Torchwood’, ‘Hustle’, ‘Cranford’, ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’, ‘Sense and Sensibility’, ‘Coming Down The Mountain’ and ‘Stuart: A Life Backwards’. The newly appointed BBC Films’ board reports in to her, and she works with them to invest the BBC Films’ annual budget of £10 million into new British feature films. Before taking up her current position Jane was Controller of Drama Commissioning, and before that, head of the BBC's in-house serials department. Her credits there include ‘Warriors’, ‘The Way We Live Now’, ‘Care’, ‘Wives and Daughters’, ‘Babyfather’ and ‘Crime and Punishment’. In 1997 Jane worked as an executive producer for BBC Films and single drama.

Laura Mackie - Director of Drama ITV. Laura was a Producer/Executive Producer at the BBC and then moved to become Deputy Controller of Drama at LWT overseeing ‘London’s Burning’, ‘Forgotten’ and ‘Othello’. She returned to the BBC as Head of Series and Serials and was responsible for a wide range of programmes including ‘Waking the Dead’, ‘Cutting It’, ‘Bleak House’, ‘Charles II’, ‘Blackpool’, ‘Canterbury Tales’, ‘Auf Wiedershen Pet’ and ‘North and South’. She joined ITV Commissioning in April 2006 and took over from Nick Elliott as Director of Drama in May 2007. Laura’s commissions include ‘Torn’, ‘The Whistleblowers’, ‘My Boy Jack’, ‘The Palace’ and ‘Moving Wallpaper/Echo Beach’ plus the upcoming ‘He Kills Coppers’ and ‘The Fixer’.

Guillermo Del Toro - Writer/Director/Producer Guillermo Del Toro came to the first Screenwriters’ Festival in 2006 and previewed some clips from his Oscar nominated film ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ to the captivated audience as well as showing us inside his head through his notebook where he scribbles his weird and wonderful ideas. Due to the tight timeline he had, he was only able to stay for a few hours, something that Guillermo would like to change this time. He is currently in post with ‘Hellboy II The Golden Army’ but coming out soon is a Spanish film he executively produced; ‘The Orphanage’ is a cracking horror that premiered at Cannes 2007 and scared the cack out of the audience, me being one of them.

Julian Fellowes - Writer/Director/Actor Julian Fellowes is another SWF’06 luminary. Well known for his Oscar winning script for ‘Gosford Park’, he then went on to write and direct his drama ‘Separate Lies’. He has also written the script for the recently shot ‘Young Victoria’ which will be released next year, starring Emily Blunt. He returns to talk about writing emotional and emotive characters.

Peter Kosminsky - Writer/Director Peter Kosminsky is well known for his controversial drama about Dr David Kelly for Channel 4 ‘The Government Inspector’ and the recent two-part ‘Britz’. As a director he made the BAFTA winning dramas ‘No Child of Mine’ and ‘Warriors’ as well as the new labour drama ‘The Project’. He also made two feature for the cinema; ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘White Oleander’. Peter was a winner of the Alan Clarke award for Outstanding Contribution to Television and a Fellow of the Royal Television Society.

Lucy Prebble - Writer Lucy Prebble’s adaptation of ‘A Secret Diary of a Call Girl’ starring Billie Piper, which was based on the blogs of real life call girl Belle De Jour, was the stand-out in ITV’s recent Big Thursday season. Prior to that she has won the prestigious George Devine Award for her outstanding debut play ‘The Sugar Syndrome’ and has adapted Jane Austen’s epistolary novella ‘Lady Susan’ for Celador Films and BBC4. Lucy is currently writing a play for the Headlong Theatre Company based on the Enron debacle.

David Lemon - David has written several episodes of the BBC1 daytime drama ‘Doctors' as well as live action and animation for children's television. He also worked in TV production directing ‘fly on the wall' documentaries in inner city hospitals and producing ‘making of' DVD documentaries on classic British films including ‘Brief Encounter', ‘The Red Shoes' and ‘The 39 Steps'.  A massive fan of cartoons, comics and pretty much anything Joss Whedon turns his hand to, David is currently working on new projects for both film and television, including a ‘high concept' sci-fi series and a fantasy film for family audiences. His big screen debut ‘Faintheart' is a Film4/Vertigo Films production in association with myspace and Slingshot Studios and is a comedy about a group of hapless battle re-enactors, starring Eddie Marsan, Jessica Hynes and Ewen Bremner, and will premier at the Cannes Film Festival.

Deborah Moggach - Deborah Moggach wrote the BAFTA-nominated screenplay for the recent Working Title movie of ‘Pride and Prejudice’, starring Keira Knightley. She also received the Writers Guild Award for Best Adapted TV Serial for ‘Goggle-Eyes’. She has adapted several of her own novels for TV, including ‘Close Relations’, ‘Final Demand’, ‘To Have and To Hold’, ’Stolen’ and ‘Seesaw’, and other credits include the BBC adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s ‘Love in a Cold Climate’. She has just adapted ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ for the BBC. Her novel ‘Tulip Fever’ was bought by Steven Spielberg’s Dreamworks and her adaptation of her novel ‘These Foolish Things’, about outsourcing the elderly to India, is due to be filmed this year. 

Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong - As a team, writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong are mostly well known for their work with Robert Webb and David Mitchell on ‘That Mitchell and Webb Look’, and five seasons of the BAFTA Award Winning ‘Peep Show’, they have also written for sketch shows such as ‘Smack the Pony’, ‘2D’ and ‘The Catherine Tate Show’. Jesse, on his own, is one of the main writers on the BAFTA Award Winning satire ‘The Thick of It’. Recently the pair have written for the silver screen with Mitchell and Webb’s big screen debut ‘Magicians’ and are currently working on ‘Sleeper’ for the Weinstein Company and as consultants with Sacha Baron Cohen on his fashion industry send-up ‘Bruno’ for Universal. 

David Bishop - Comic writer David Bishop is a former editor of iconic British comic 2000 AD. He has had nearly 20 novels published, written comic characters and graphic novels for publishers in Britain, the US, Scandinavia and Australia, and has scripted radio plays for the BBC. He was awarded a screenwriting MA with distinction from Screen Academy Scotland, and his short film script ‘Danny's Toys’ won a first prize at the Page International Screenwriting Awards in Los Angeles, both in 2007 

Robbie Morrison - Born in Scotland in1968, Robbie Morrison grew up in Linwood, outside Glasgow. One of the most highly regarded writers in the comics industry, he has created many popular and successful characters. 'The Adventures of Nikolai Dante', serialised in 2000 AD since 1997, and released as seven Graphic Novels to date, is an Eagle Award winner for Best Series and Character.  'White Death', a Graphic Novel set in the Italian Alps during the First World War, where thousands of Austrian and Italian troops were killed by avalanches caused by cannon-fire, enjoyed success in Europe and the US.  Robbie has also scripted iconic characters such as 'Spider-man', 'Batman' and 'Judge Dredd'.  Outside of comics, a short screenplay, 'Monsters', co-written with film story-boarder Rob McCallum ('Hairspray', 'Land Of The Dead'), was a finalist for Tartan Shorts (BBC/Scottish Screen).  Robbie has recently written 'Intimate Apparel', a screenplay for a romantic comedy-thriller set in Glasgow, and is currently working with artist Jim Murray on a Graphic Novel, due for release by Random House/Jonathan Cape in 2009.

John Tomlinson - ‘Comics writer and editor John Tomlinson is known mainly for his work on the SF anthology title ‘2000 AD’. His career in comics began in the 1980s at the UK branch of Marvel, home of ‘Spider-Man’ and ‘The Incredible Hulk’, where he worked as editor, designer and writer of comic strips. In 1993 he moved to Fleetway Editions (now Egmont), where he edited ‘2000 AD’ for two years. With Steve White, Dan Abnett and artist Peter Snejbjerg he co-created and wrote ‘The Lords of Misrule’, a horror title published by Dark Horse comics in the USA and optioned in 1997 by Universal (where it has remained in development Hell ever since). He currently works for the part work publisher Eaglemoss, where he edits two magazines based around the ‘The Lord of the Rings’ films, while continuing to write comics in his spare time.’ 

Richard Hand/Michael Wilson - Richard is Professor of Theatre and Media Drama and Michael Wilson is Professor of Drama and Head of Research at the Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of Glamorgan. Together they have published 'Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror' and 'London's Grand-Guignol and the Theatre of Horror' as well as articles on the Grand-Guignol. Individually, Richard Hand is author of 'The Theatre of Joseph Conrad: Reconstructed Fictions', 'Terror on the Air: Horror Radio in America' and is co-editor (with Jay McRoy) of 'Monstrous Adaptations: Generic and Thematic Transmutations in Horror Film'. He has directed numerous stage plays, including horror plays, in the UK and USA; and as an actor he appeared as the "Father" in G. H. Evans's award-winning independent feature film 'Footsteps' (2006), a revenge thriller about snuff movies. Michael is the author of 'Performance and Practice: Oral Narratives Among Teenagers in Britain and Ireland' and 'Storytelling and Theatre: Contemporary Practitioner and their Art', as well as publishing numerous articles and translations relating to Bertolt Brecht and his contemporaries (with Oliver Double). A former professional storyteller and actor, he continues to act, including in Grand-Guignol horror plays and comedies.