Name Shelley Silas Role Playwright | ||
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Books Mercy Fine, Calcutta Kosher, Falling, Twelve Days | ||
BritBits 4: He Says She Says
Shelley Silas is a British-Jewish playwright. Born in Calcutta, India in 1959 of Sephardi Jewish heritage, she moved to Golders Green, North London aged two. Her father had also been born in Calcutta and had moved to Mandatory Palestine at the age of two and later fought in the Israeli War of Independence; her Indian-born mother left her wealthy family and moved to London at nineteen.
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Career
In 2002, she won a Pearson award and was writer-in-residence at London's Bush Theatre. Her stage plays are published by Oberon.
Her work for BBC Radio Four includes The Sound of Silence (short-listed for the 2003 Imison Award, creating and co-writing The Magpie Stories;, adapting Hanan al-Shaykh's novel Only in London and co-adapting Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet (with John Harvey).
She has also compiled and edited an anthology of short stories, 12 Days, published by Virago Press.
Stage plays
Radio plays
Current radio commissions (2010)