Tolu Okanlawon

Tolu Okanlawon is a British-Nigerian writer for TV, theatre and film from Hackney, East London. His debut play, Shooters, about the photojournalist Gordon Parks, won The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2025. A full production is due to be staged in Manchester at the Royal Exchange in 2027. With a background in documentary development, Tolu has a taste for provocative stories with social and political resonance that blur the line between truth and invention.

A graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama’s Writing for Stage and Screen MFA, Tolu was recently selected to be part of the Diverse Writers Development Programme 2025, a joint initiative from Left Bank Pictures and The National Film and Television School, with support from Sony Pictures Television, where he devised an original drama concept for TV.