Rob Young

Rob Young is an award-winning writer. He went full-time professional in 1998 and has been commissioned to write for many of the UK’s biggest TV, film and theatre companies. Rob wrote the first online play for the RSC and Google: ‘Midsummer Nights Dreaming’ appeared on 25 million tweets, trended 4^th in the world and won two Lovie Awards. His feature film, ‘Miranda’, starred Christina Ricci and won the Audience Award (main prize) at London’s Raindance Film Festival. He has since been commissioned to write original scripts for the BBC, Channel 4, Filmfour, Radio 4, Working Title, Sony, Carlton, Endemol, Touchpaper, Helkon, Kudos, Ruby, Baby Cow, Soho Theatre and The National Theatre. His adaptation of Hemingway’s Pulitzer Prize winning novella, ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, won the Award for Artistic Excellence at England’s biggest arts festival. He has written 12 plays for the stage that received kind reviews in the broadsheets.

“A fascinating playwright”, The Times.

“He has an unnatural way with small lethal details that tell entire stories”, Evening Standard.

Rob has written over 2,000 six-page script reports to encourage fledgling writers and was a BAFTA Screenplay Judge. He studied theatre design at Wimbledon was commissioned to produce a touring exhibition for the Olympics. As an expedition photographer, Rob was sent on assignments to Chile, Tanzania and Pakistan.

Rob is currently Writer-in-Residence on the Chatham Placemaking Project (a £4m Government initiative) and also Writer in Residence at The University of Sunderland. His two new works (‘A Play About Sex’ and ‘A Play About Death’) are being read at the Sunderland Festival of Literature this Autumn.

Rob is Special Projects Producer for the multi award-winning theatre company, Ridiculusmus. Recent achievements include negotiating a residency at the RSC and a three-book deal with Oberon.

Rob is also a Faculty Associate of NHS Research and Development NW, where he is working on a number of projects including the yearlong initiative, The Academy of Creative Minds. He will be presenting at their September confrerence.

Rob is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Researcher, a new digital magazine for the NHS. The launch issue was published in 2016.

Rob is currently writing an animated short, ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’, for Opera North in collaboration with the South Bank Centre.  His short films are currently showing on Chatham’s Big Screen, until the end of Summer.  Rob’s one-woman-show, ‘The Amy Johnson Fan Club’, premiered at Kardomah94 at the end of July, as part of the Amy Johnson Festival (a prelude to Hull’s City of Culture celebrations).  Rob is a Senior Script Reader for New Writing South and a mentor for Apples and Snakes, the UK’s leading spoken word organisation.