Abi Morgan

Abigail Louise Morgan OBE (born December 1968) is a Welsh playwright and screenwriter known for her works for television, such as Sex Traffic and The Hour, and the films Brick Lane, The Iron Lady, Shame and Suffragette. Abigail Louise Morgan was born in Cardiff, Wales, in December 1968. She is the daughter of actress Pat England and theatre director Gareth Morgan, who was director of the Gulbenkian Theatre in Newcastle upon Tyne (now the Northern Stage). Her parents divorced when she was a teenager. As a child, she frequently moved around the country with her mother because of the latter's career in repertory theatre. She attended seven separate schools during her childhood. After initial ambitions to become an actress, Morgan decided to become a writer when she was reading drama and literature at Exeter University. She took a postgraduate writing course at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Having not dared to show any of her writing "to anyone for five years", she gained her first professional stage credit in 1998 with Skinned, produced at the Nuffield Theatre, Southampton. She has written plays for the Royal Exchange Studio Theatre Manchester, the Royal Lyceum Theatre, the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, the National Theatre of Scotland, and the Royal Court, London.