Our office is now closed until Monday 4 January. Any orders placed via our website will now not be processed until after that date. If you require your print books or CDs more urgently, please try an alternative retailer.

Ebook orders will continue to be fufilled as normal, though support will be limited between Thursday 23 December and Monday 4 January.

Our info@nickhernbooks.co.uk email account will be checked intermittently, but our phone lines are closed. Thanks, and Merry Christmas.

Entries for the Papatango Prize 2021 opened today (27 November), with submissions accepted until 7 February.

The 2021 edition of the Prize – run by Papatango, one of the UK's most renowned new-writing companies, in partnership with English Touring Theatre – has been adapted to respond to the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This time, three winners will each receive £2000 for their plays, which will be recorded as audio productions and will then tour the UK in free listening stations, with scripts including braille translations, so that audiences everywhere can enjoy brilliant new writing in their local theatre when such programming is under threat. Venues already confirmed for the tour include Bristol Old Vic, Bush Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre, Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse, Lyric Theatre Belfast, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Southwark Playhouse, Theatre Clwyd and Theatre Royal Plymouth.

The winning plays will also be published in ebook format by NHB.

The Papatango Prize is free to enter, scripts are judged anonymously, and every entry receives individual feedback. To see full information about the Prize, and to enter, visit the Papatango website.

Let's be honest, 2020 has been a really tough year – which makes this #LoveTheatreDay a more special and vital occasion than ever. Theatres and companies may have been forced to shut their doors and down tools for now, but we can still come together to celebrate and appreciate the art-form we all love.

So we're marking the occasion by offering you the chance to save 40% on dozens of great NHB playscripts and theatre books, for 24 hours only, in our #LoveTheatreDay Sale!

The Sale runs from 10am GMT on Wednesday 18 November to 10am GMT on Thursday 19 November. No voucher code is required – just fill your basket with as many of the brilliant titles below as you like, head to checkout, and your discount will be automatically applied. This offer applies to paperback and ebook editions of the titles included (where available).

Plus, £1 from every book sold in our #LoveTheatreDay Sale will go to the Theatre Artists Fund, which provides emergency support for theatre-workers and freelancers across the UK affected by the devastating impact of COVID-19 on the theatre sector.

Visit our #LoveTheatreDay Sale page for more information.

The recipients of the Olivier Awards 2020 were announced last night (Sunday 25 October), with NHB-published Dear Evan Hansen one of the ceremony's big winners.

The acclaimed, groundbreaking show by Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul took home three prizes: Best New Musical, Best Original Score or New Orchestrations, and Best Actor in a Musical (Sam Tutty). Its Olivier Awards wins follow the huge success of Dear Evan Hansen's Broadway premiere, where it won six Tony Awards including Best Musical, as well as the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.

Dear Evan Hansen was playing at the Noel Coward Theatre in London's West End, until it was forced to close in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is currently slated to return in 2021.

NHB author Conor McPherson's acclaimed new version of Anton Chekhov classic Uncle Vanya will be released in cinemas internationally on 27 October, it was announced today (21 September). The production will also be broadcast on BBC Four later in 2020.

Directed by Ian Rickson, it will feature the original cast, led by Toby Jones and Richard Armitage, with the exception of Ciarán Hinds, who has been replaced by Roger Allam. The filmed version was recorded over the past month, following the show's early closure in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conor McPherson's Uncle Vanya premiered in January 2020 at the Harold Pinter in London's West End to rave reviews, with WhatsOnStage calling it 'a feat of magical reinvention'. The playscript is currently available at a 30% discount in our Still on the Page promotion, which celebrates the dozens of NHB-published productions that were cut short or cancelled due to COVID-19.

For more information about Uncle Vanya, and to book tickets, head to the production's website.

We're delighted to be supporting the Theatre Uncut Political Playwriting Award, which is now open for submissions from until 7 October 2020.

Offering a prize of £9,500 for the winner, the Award is open to UK writers who have had no more that two plays presented as professional, full-production runs. Submitted plays must be at least sixty minutes in length, require no more than six actors, original stories (not adaptations or translations), and not have been professionally produced before. Entries will be read anonymously.

For full criteria and information, visit the Theatre Uncut website.

The winner of the Papatango New Writing Prize 2020 was announced today (13 July), with Old Bridge by Igor Memic beating out over 1,500 other entries to be crowned the winner.

Influenced by Memic’s Bosnian heritage, Old Bridge explores the true story of what befell Mostar, his hometown, during the Yugoslavian civil war. The play will be performed for the first time at the Bush Theatre, London, as part of their reopening season post the COVID-19 pandemic. It will also published by NHB at the same time, in our role as Publishing Partner of the Prize.

The other shortlisted plays were: Animal by Jon Bradfield (from a story by Jon Bradfield and Josh Hepple), Exile in North Weezy by Beru Tessema, Playfight by Julia Grogan, and Pushing on Open Doors by Sarah Connors.

See more about the announcement on the Papatango website.

£25 OF BOOKS FOR 20 BLACK ARTISTS - TERMS AND CONDITIONS

1. Twenty Black artists will each receive £25 of Nick Hern Books- published books for free. We’ll also cover delivery (within the UK).

2. This opportunity includes all titles published by Nick Hern Books, in whichever formats that title is available (including paperback, hardback, ebook and audio CD) at www.nickhernbooks.co.uk. Books by other publishers that are listed on our website, such as imports, are not included.

3. The £25 amount refers to the value of an order on our website, excluding postage, once our standard 20% online order discount has been applied. As an example, three plays with an RRP of £9.99 would each count as £7.99 towards the full amount, meaning they could all be included in your selected books.

4. If the books you have requested come to over £25, we may get in touch and ask you to make changes to your selection to bring your total to within the agreed amount. We may also need to ask you to swap some titles if the book(s) you have asked for are currently out of stock.

5. This opportunity is open to Black artists only. We won’t be asking for proof of ID or anything like that, so we ask that you please respect the spirit in which this is offered and only submit a request for books if you are eligible.

6. This opportunity will operate on a first-come, first-served basis for the first twenty eligible respondents to email their selected books and postal address to info@nickhernbooks.co.uk.

7. Please note that while we need your postal address to send you your chosen books, and may need to contact you by email to clarify any title requests or to update you on delivery, we won’t retain your personal details or add you to any mailing list without your consent.

8. To maximise the reach of this opportunity, artists who received free books in Gilbert Kyem Jnr.’s initial call-out are ineligible for this new round of requests.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to email us at info@nickhernbooks.co.uk, or reach out on social media!

We're delighted to announce that we're now inviting applications to license Nick Hern Books plays for amateur online performance.

With theatres currently closed, an online performance is the perfect way to bring your members or students together to keep sharing your passion, experience great new plays by today's most exciting writers, and stay active and connected. Whether you're looking to share a play you've always been passionate about (maybe even getting a former cast together for a revival!), test out a show you've had your eye on for a future, fully staged production, or try something completely different, we're here to support you in making that happen.

Online performance licences are available for both live-streamed performances and broadcasts of recorded productions, at a discounted rate of £75 plus VAT (or less for shorter plays) for each live performance or day that the production remains online.

For more information on how the whole process works, visit our Online Performances page.

Theatre Centre and Theatre503 have today (14 May) announced ImagiNation, a new project proudly supported by NHB. 

19 writers have created new short plays, which are available to read online. Everyone who reads these is encouraged to record themselves performing as many as they like, and submit their finished videos to Theatre Centre by 20 July for the chance to appear in a compilation film.

To help with the recording, Theatre Centre have also released free video resources with experienced tutors, sharing tips on acting, directing, recording your film, and using your voice.

The writers involved are: Jon Brittain, Ryan Calais Cameron, Alex Critoph, Zinnie Harris, Matilda Ibini, Asif Khan, Geraldine Lang, Bethan Marlow, Eoin McAndrew, Nicholas McQuillan, Nessah Muthy, Amy Ng, Chinonyerem Odimba, Lettie Precious, Leo Skilbeck, Julie Tsang, Daniel Ward, Timberlake Wertenbaker and Roy Williams.

See more about ImagiNation here.