Polly Wright

Polly Wright is a theatre director, performer, facilitator, writer, lecturer, and researcher. She co-founded Women and Theatre in Birmingham, where she co-wrote and performed many cabaret sketches and plays. Recently she collaborated with Women and Theatre again to co-write a play which celebrated their history called After 30 Years at the Birmingham Rep. in October 2014)

Since setting up Hearth she has been the sole playwright and producer of 8 plays on mental health, performed in Birmingham Venues, including the Rep, the Drum and mac birmingham. Hearth has been short listed for a Mind Media Award in 2008 following a tour of Northern Ireland, and Polly was short listed as a mental health hero herself in 2010 and a Depression Alliance award in 2014.

Polly has published 5 short stories with Tindal Street Press, the most recent of which was in the TSFG anthology The Sea in Birmingham. ( 2013)

The Hearth Centre was granted contracts from 2007 onwards to develop Reading for Well Being in secure and community mental health settings in Birmingham. She now lectures on the shared reading approach and its links to creative writing internationally

Polly is a visiting lecturer at Birmingham University Medical School in Literature in Medicine, and at BCU in Applied Theatre and in theatre writing at Newman University and lectures regularly in Finland.