Richard Imison (31 October 1936 – 9 February 1993) was Script Editor for

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Drama from 1963 to 1991. In the thirty years that Imison worked for BBC Radio Drama it was the largest patron of original creative dramatic writing in Britain. In his role as Script Editor no other single individual therefore had as much influence in either the discovery of new talent or the encouragement of established writers such as Edward Albee, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya,

Alexander Gelman Alexander Gelman (born December 21, 1960), born: Aleksandr Simonovich Gelman (russian: Алекса́ндр Си́монович Ге́льман) is an American theater director and the current Producing Artistic Director of Organic Theater Comp ...

, Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett in the production of drama for this genre. Richard Imison was key in setting up The Giles Cooper Awards in 1977, together with Geoffrey Strachan of the publishers Methuen. These lasted until the year after his death and were the premier celebration of dramatic writing for radio. They were named after the radio dramatist Giles Cooper whose work first appeared on BBC radio in 1949. After his death in 1993 the

Society of Authors The Society of Authors (SoA) is a United Kingdom trade union for professional writers, illustrators and literary translators, founded in 1884 to protect the rights and further the interests of authors. , it represents over 12,000 members and ass ...

established the

Richard Imison Award The Richard Imison Award is an award which recognises the best radio drama, generally by a writer new to the industry, and is now awarded as part of the BBC Audio Drama Awards. It was established in 1994 and commemorates the life and work of Richa ...

in recognition of Imison's enduring influence on the development of high quality dramatic writing.

References

1936 births 1993 deaths Radio editors BBC people People from Birkenhead {{UK-radio-bio-stub