LONDON: Kenya's Eddie Ogembo and Switzerland's Anuradha Swaminathan have won the two top honours in the BBC World Service International Playwriting Competition for this year.
While Ogembo won in the 'English as a first language category' with his play Binti's Party, Swaminathan won in the 'English as the second language category' with her play, Loyalty.
The two winners are being flown over to London this month to attend the studio recording of their plays which will be broadcast on BBC next month.
BBC runs the International Playwriting Competition with the British Council and this year received more than 900 entries from all over the world. The competition has been running for over 15 years during which more than 6,000 entries have been received. Many of the winning authors' plays have been staged and broadcast by the BBC.
An official release informs that Loyalty was awarded the regional prize for Europe and Binti's Party won the prize for Africa and the Middle East.
The other regional winners were Spell it Out by Philip Heckman (Americas), Collaborators by Ramu Ramanathan (South Asia and former Soviet Union) and In Synch by Dennis Gillman (Asia/Pacific).