Ursula Rani Sarma is an award-winning scriptwriter for stage and screen, of Irish Indian descent. Her credits include feature film In The Shadows (Sleeper/ Affine Films / True Brit), Bodkin (Netflix/Higher Ground/Wiip), Smother (Treasure/BBC Studios/ RTE), Delicious (Sky One/Bandit), and Red Rock (Element/TV3) amongst others.

Ursula’s current projects include being the writer and executive producer of television series The Split Up with Sister Pictures for the BBC as well as developing projects for Bad Wolf/ Sky, George Clooney’s Smokehouse, Gillian Anderson’s Fiddlehead and Netflix.

Ursula has written numerous award-winning plays which have been produced around the world. They include Yerma (West Yorkshire Playhouse), The Dark Things (Traverse Theatre), Birdsong (The Abbey Theatre), Joanne (Clean Break) and The Magic Tree (Everyman Theatre) amongst many others. Her work is published by Oberon, Faber and Faber, Nick Hern and Penguin Random House. She is currently writing plays for The Royal National Theatre, The Abbey Theatre and EON Productions.

Ursula was the Programme Leader of the MA in Scriptwriting at Bath Spa University for ten years, up until 2019. Ursula now lives in the West of Ireland.

Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan-American novelist and physician, best known for his novels The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns and And The Mountains Echoed, which have been published in over seventy countries and sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. Today, Hosseini is recognised as one of the best-selling authors in the world.

Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1965. His father was a Diplomat for the Afghan Foreign Ministry and his mother was a teacher. In 1976, the Hosseini family were relocated to Paris by the Foreign Ministry. Though they wanted to return to their home in Kabul, Afghanistan was suffering following an extremely violent communist coup and was under invasion by the Soviet Army. The family were granted political asylum in the USA and they moved to California. Hosseini graduated Santa Clara University with a degree in Biology, and then received a medical degree from the University of California.

It was while he was a practising internist in Los Angeles that Hosseini began writing his first novel, The Kite Runner, which was published in 2003. Following its huge success, Hosseini quit medicine to focus solely on writing. Each of his books are set, fully or partially, in Afghanistan and feature an Afghan as the main protagonist. Hosseini took inspiration for his novels from his own experiences in
Afghanistan and draws on influences gained whilst exiled in Paris.

He has served as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, since 2006.  In 2008, he launched The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan

Directing credits include: Piaf (Watermill Theatre); The Land Of Might-Have-Been (Buxton Festival / Norwich Theatre); Rough Girls (Lyric Theatre, Belfast); Romeo and Juliet (Open Air Theatre); As You Like It (RSC / Barbican / UK Tour); The Whip, Dido Queen of Carthage (Nominated for best director at UK theatre awards) (RSC); Beryl (Bolton Octagon) Mark and the Marked, The Hate Play, Macbeth, (Box Clever Theatre); Whose Sari Now? (Theatre Royal Stratford East); In the Solitude of Cotton Fields (Tristan Bates); Diary of a Thief (The King’s Head Theatre).

Kimberley has led development and dramaturgical work for the RSC, Lyric Belfast, Headlong, Donmar Warehouse and National Theatre Studio. Other roles include Education Associate Practitioner for the RSC, Connections Director for the National Theatre, judge for the Alan Bates Award and reader for The Bruntwood Prize. 

Kimberley trained at Rose Bruford College and the National Theatre Studio Directors course and is a Clore Leadership Fellow 2024/25.

Musical Theatre credits include: Lord Of The Rings (Chicago, Aukland, Sydney); Rehab The Musical (West End); The Lord Of The Rings; Whistle Down The Wind (Watermill); The Lion (Southwark Playhouse/Arizona Theatre Company, Japan, Korea); The Light in the Piazza, Merrily We Roll Along (Royal Academy of Music); The Wiz (Hope Mill); Ghost Quartet (Boulevard Theatre); Assassins (Watermill/Nottingham Playhouse); Cabaret (English Theatre Frankfurt/Deutsches Theater Munich); the multi award-winning Sweeney Todd in a purpose-built pie shop (West End/Off-Broadway, Drama Desk nomination – Outstanding Set Design of a Musical).

Other theatre credits include: Romeo and Juliet (Belgrade, Coventry); Link In My Bio (Luxembourg Opera), The Unseen (Riverside Studios); Bodies of Water (ATC); Here In America, Duet For One (Orange Tree, Richmond); Steel, Brassed Off (Theatre By The Lake); One Last Push (Wiltshire Creative); Murder In The Dark (UK Tour); The Real & Imagined History of the Elephant Man (Nottingham Playhouse); Family Tree (ATC); Blue/Orange (Royal & Derngate Northampton); Nothello (Belgrade/Coventry City of Culture); The Art of Illusion, The Death of a Black Man (Hampstead); Footfalls & Rockaby (Jermyn Street); Antigone (Mercury Colchester); several UK tours for Eclipse including The Gift (Stratford East) and Black Men Walking (Royal Exchange); Crongton Knights, Noughts & Crosses (Pilot/UK tours); Red Dust Road (National Theatre of Scotland); Giraffes Can’t Dance (Curve); The Children (English Theatre Frankfurt); Holes (Nottingham Playhouse/UK tour); Broken Glass (Watford Palace); Babette’s Feast (The Print Room); Rose (HOME); Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare’s Globe).

Helena is a freelance casting director with over 20 years’ experience. She began her casting career at the Royal Exchange, Manchester and then with the National Theatre. She was Casting Director at the Royal Shakespeare Company from 2008 to 2021.

Theatre includes: The Government Inspector and Anna Karenina (Chichester Festival Theatre); Red or Dead (Liverpool’s Royal Court); Gigi & Dar (Arcola Theatre); An Inspector Calls (PW Productions – 2024 UK tour); The Glass Menagerie (Rose Theatre, Kingston and tour); Untitled F*ck M*ss S**gon Play (Manchester Royal Exchange/Young Vic); No Pay? No Way!, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Beginning (Manchester Royal Exchange); The Tempest and Cymbeline (Royal Shakespeare Company); Linck & Mülhahn, Mary and The Fever Syndrome (Hampstead Theatre); The White Factory and Dmitry (Marylebone Theatre) and The Mirror and the Light (Gielgud Theatre).

Helena is a member of the Casting Directors’ Guild.