Fiona Shaw is an Irish actress and theatre and opera director, known for her role as Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter films and her role as Marnie Stonebrook in the HBO series True Blood (2011). She has worked extensively with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, twice winning the Olivier Award for Best Actress. She was awarded an Honorary CBE in 2001.

Bijan Sheibani is a freelance theatre, opera and film director, and playwright.

As a playwright, his work includes The Cord (Bush Theatre, London, 2024) and The Arrival (Bush Theatre, 2019).

As a theatre director, his credits include Till the Stars Come Down (National Theatre), The Brothers Size (Young Vic), Dance Nation (Almeida), Barber Shop Chronicles (National Theatre) and Circle Mirror Transformation (Home Manchester).

He was an associate director of the National Theatre from 2010-2015, and artistic director of ATC from 2007-2010. He won the James Menzies-Kitchen Award for Young Directors in 2003 and held the John S Cohen Bursary at the National Theatre Studio from 2003-2004. He was nominated for an Olivier Award in 2010 for Best Director for his production of Our Class, and his production of Gone Too Far! by Bola Agbaje won an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre in 2008. The Brothers Size won Best International Production at the Barcelona Critics Circle Awards 2008 and was nominated for an Olivier Award in the same year. Bijan's production of Nothing for Glyndebourne was nominated for a 2017 Southbank Sky Arts Award for Best Opera.

(Author photo by Manuel Harlan)

Dominic Shellard is a respected theatre academic and biographer of Kenneth Tynan.

Mary Shelley (1797–1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein (1818).

Philip Shelley is a producer and script editor who has worked with screenwriters for more than thirty years.

He has run the Channel 4 screenwriting course since 2010, and also runs the Greenlight Screenwriting Lab for new writers in Ireland.

Philip has run many screenwriting and script-editing courses through his own script consultancy and with BBC Studios, ITV Studios, thinkBIGGER! Channel 4 Production Trainee Scheme, Screen Ireland, BBC Writers, Northern Ireland Screen, Screenskills, University of the Arts London, De Montfort University, Filmnation UK, Baby Cow Productions, and many others.

He has extensive experience as a script editor on major drama series for the BBC, ITV and others. He was Head of Development for Carlton TV Drama for seven years, where he also ran the Carlton New Writers' Course, and has worked in script development for BBC TV Drama and several independent production companies.

He runs his own script consultancy (www.script-consultant.co.uk) and works with writers of all levels of experience, as well as production companies and broadcasters.

Sam Shepard is an American playwright, actor, and television and film director. He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child.