A Lancaster University creative writing lecturer is one of three winners of the UK’s biggest annual playwriting award.

Selected from 1,410 entries, Tajinder Singh Hayer will receive £2000, an audio production and digital publication for his script ‘Ghost Stories From An Old Country’.

This year the Papatango New Writing Prize is a new partnership with ETT (English Touring Theatre).

Judged anonymously, with this year’s winners selected by Papatango and ETT, each audio play will be recorded and tour to 12 venues spanning the UK including Bristol Old Vic, Chichester Festival Theatre, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Theatre Royal Plymouth, Leeds Playhouse, Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse, Laurels Whitley Bay, Theatr Clwyd, Lyric Theatre Belfast, Southwark Playhouse and Bush Theatre.

The recordings will be played from free listening stations, with copies of the scripts, including braille translations, available. Tour dates to be announced.

Three casts and creative teams will be assembled to record the winning plays – with the company hosting open-entry applications for selected roles including actors, directors and sound designers.

Artistic Director of Papatango George Turvey said: “There was a point when it looked like the Papatango Prize might have to fall silent in 2021, with so many projects postponed and stages booked up with deferred shows.

“That, instead, we’ve been able, together with ETT, to rally and present the Prize in a completely new format, supporting more artists than ever before on a completely free and accessible national tour, is a joy.

“This year saw our highest ever standard of entries, and the three winning writers, whose work we’re privileged to share, are proof that when times are hardest, story-tellers emerge to reinvent and renew.

“We hope everyone will listen in their local theatre, because they’ve got brilliant things to say at a time when new voices matter more than ever.”

Tajinder Singh Hayer added: “The Papatango Prize has been such a wonderful surprise. Like many scriptwriters, I was genuinely scared about the future of the theatre sector.

“So, it was great to see Papatango reacting in this nimble and sensitive manner to reshape the Prize.

“I would not have written ‘Ghost Stories from an Old Country’ without the Prize. I wrote it in a burst to make the deadline. So, it contains some of the rawness that comes with writing at speed, but also some of the rawness of an emotionally draining year.”

Every entrant receives feedback on their script – a commitment made by no other company, especially significant as the Prize averages more submissions on a yearly basis than any other playwriting award.

Threaded through with captivating fables, ‘Ghost Stories From An Old Country’is a riveting and poignant exploration of the ties that bind us.

It tells the story of Dalvir, who has always told a good ghost story - properly unsettling, dark tales to send a chill right through his younger brother Amar.

But now Dalvir is almost a ghost himself, cloistered and secretive. Amar desperately wants to reconnect with the only family he has left, but can he unravel Dalvir’s stories to find a way back to his brother?

Tajinder Singh Hayer lectures in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. His writing credits for theatre include North Country (Freedom Studios), Players, Mela (Leeds Playhouse) and In This House (Menagerie); and for radio, The One That Got Away (BBC Radio 3), If You Can’t Stand The Heat, ID (BBC Radio 4), We’re Not Getting Married, Ask Mina (BBC Asian Network), and Tidelands.

His television credits include Numtums. He previously won the BBC’s The Spin competition with his play People Like Me in 2003. He has been a writer on attachment at the Leeds Playhouse, BBC Radio Drama Manchester and the National Theatre.