A MUM in Bradford who took up writing less than two years ago is being tipped as an exciting TV screenwriter after winning a national award.

Nuzhat Ali, 51, was a winner of the Channel 4/Northumbria University Writing for Television Award at the Northern Writers’ Awards. The new award seeks to identify raw and diverse writing talent from the north of England.

Nuzhat, of Fairweather Green, was selected from 264 entrants to win the award, offering her the opportunity to be mentored through the script commissioning process with Red Production Company, whose recent productions include hit TV dramas Scott and Bailey and Happy Valley. As part of the judging process, she joined five other finalists in pitching their ideas to commissioning editors from each production company.

Nuzhat home-educated her two younger children for eight years and started writing when they went on to further education.

She completed an Education Studies degree and was one of ten people selected for the Street Voices 5 playwriting course last October.

This was followed by her selection for the Dream Reality Radio competition in December. Her play, When George Came to Bradford, was staged as part of this year's Bradford Literature Festival and has been recorded for the BBC Radio website.

From July, she will spend ten months being mentored in script development from top television professionals, who will support her towards pitching her own ideas for broadcast.

She said: “I entered the Northern Writers’ Awards because of the encouragement of my family and friends. It looked like a brilliant opportunity, I decided I had nothing to lose by trying. I was over the moon to be shortlisted and I’m delighted to have been selected.

"I am really looking forward to working with Red Production Company and am hoping that this opportunity will take my writing to a professional level.”

Red Production Company’s TV credits include Russell T Davies’ Queer As Folk and romantic comedy Bob and Rose and Paul Abbott’s Clocking Off, and more recently, it has produced acclaimed dramas such as Sally Wainwright¹s Scott and Bailey, Last Tango in Halifax and Happy Valley, as well as Prey and Ordinary Lies.

Creative director Caroline Hollick said the company was "blown away" by Nuzhat's entry.

She said: “Nurturing raw talent is what we strive to do and we were impressed by all the finalists. However, for us there was one clear winner, and that was Nuzhat Ali.

"We think she has the most to gain from this bursary and year's development with Red, and we were blown away by her passion, her strength of opinion, and wealth of experience.

"She's also very new to writing, having only started less than two years ago, which made her very competent sample pages read even more strongly to us. "We think we can do so much to help Nuzhat gain a foothold in the TV industry, while we can learn a lot from her about her own experiences, which we are confident she will transform into original drama.”