Shelagh Stephenson was born in Northumberland and read drama at Manchester University. Her first stage play, The Memory of Water, premiered at Hampstead Theatre in 1996 and subsequently transferred to the West End, where it won an Olivier Award for Best Comedy in 2000. Her second play, An Experiment With An Air Pump, opened at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. It was joint recipient of the Peggy Ramsay Award and later transferred to the Hampstead Theatre. Both plays subsequently ran at New York's Manhattan Theatre Club. Her third play, Ancient Lights, was produced at Hampstead Theatre in December 2000. She has written several radio plays, including the award-winning Five Kinds of Silence, which she adapted for the stage and which was presented at the Lyric, Hammersmith in 2000. Her screen adaptation of The Memory of Water was released in spring 2002 with the title Before You Go.

At three o'clock in the morning, this is what I think. I think somebody killed him. They killed him, God, I don't know how I'm uttering these words ... they killed him because he's white and Western and they hated him. And it wasn't personal. Which somehow makes it worse.

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Enlightenment is a powerful study of parental grief and of hope amidst uncertainty.
Published to tie-in with the world premier at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in March 2005.