In March 2024, Genesis Almeida writer Ava Pickett won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, a prestigious playwriting award for women+ playwrights, with her play 1536.

Ava wrote the play during the 2021/22 Genesis Almeida New Playwrights, Big Plays Programme, an initiative aimed at supporting emerging and mid-career writers to develop new plays for larger stages. The aim of the programme is to provide a springboard for writers to expand the scale, scope and ambition of their work and to create plays of wide cultural resonance.

Ava said: “[The programme] has been fantastic, and quite vital to me. They’ve been so supportive. The thing that’s so brilliant about that particular programme is they do commission you; they pay you to write a play. That means that you’re able to dedicate time to it. They read every draft and they’re able to give you a reading of it.”

The Stage

The Guardian