Michelle Inniss is a playwright, writer, and creative writing workshop facilitator, with an MA in Creative Writing from Brunel University. She is of Trinidadian heritage, grew up in Liverpool and has lived in London for many years, twenty-one of them in Brent. 

 

She was a co-founder, Artistic Director, and resident playwright for Pitch Lake Productions, whose aim was to bring unheard voices and stories to the stage, putting characters from the global majority at the centre of their own stories. Her debut play She Called Me Mother was inspired by an elderly Jamaican homeless woman she used to chat to in London Bridge station. The play was produced by Pitch Lake Productions with Tara Arts for Black Theatre Live and had a National Tour in 2015 and 2017. The play was longlisted for the Alfred Fagon Best Play of the Year Award and nominated for the Alfred Fagon Audience Award 2016. 

 

Michelle has also been longlisted for Be Discovered: Angle at the Bush Theatre Award. She was recently awarded a Seed Commission for a new play, from the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse Theatre. You can find her short story, Whatever Lola Wants, in the Anthology Closure, Peepal Tree Press. She has been shortlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize, received a Runners-up Prize for The Decibel Penguin Short Story Prize and in 2021 she was selected for the Breakthrough Novel Writing course with Curtis Brown Creative. She is currently working on her new play, They Know Not What They Do.

 

She is passionate about working as a writer in the community, sharing the power of the written and spoken word, discovering more unheard and untold stories, and bringing them to life. Since 2009 she has worked with diverse groups of people in different settings. Her work includes workshops with the Youth Offending Team in Hammersmith, Verbatim Monologues with people living with HIV, Cricklewood Library, and secondary and primary schools in Brent.

 

Her most recent work has been with the organisation A.S.K.I. which primarily supports Afro-Caribbean elders, Sutton Women’s Network, Collage Arts, Sutton Heritage Cultural Services, Community Action Sutton, African Caribbean Heritage Association (ACHA), Five-Aside-Theatre Company, and the Kiln Theatre. She is currently working with young people for the organisation People Arise Now and the nationwide initiative, Men in Sheds.

Michelle was also the co-curator of The Arts Night from 2016-2020, an eclectic evening of theatre, poetry, spoken word and live music in a local café in the heart of Kilburn, partnering with music college ICMP, Riverside Radio and Spoken Word in Paris.