Biography

Richard is a novelist and screenwriter, best known for the feature film The Abduction Club (2002), which is set in Ireland in the late eighteenth century. His first book (Fall When Hit) was published in 1992, quickly followed by The Minstrel Boy, both by Heinemann. He has been writing and developing screenplays since 1996, and has worked on scripts for a number of UK and European projects.

In 2004 and 2006 he took part in the Moonstone International Screenwriting Lab as a participant, with the feature scripts McCarthy's War (now Retribution) and The Dirty War. In 2007 he was the second participant in Moonstone history to be invited back to a Screenwriting Lab as an advisor. In 2007 he attended the Sparks workshop with BBC Radio Drama.

In 2004 he established Screenwriters.Ink, a Belfast-based screenwriters group. With 63 people attending the first night, the group became a powerhouse, and under Richard’s guidance the group produced fourteen 10 minute short films over two years as part of Project Norma. All fourteen short films premiered in special screening events at Belfast Film Festival in March 2006 and April 2007.

Richard has also provided script development support for the NI Screen/UKFC "Short Steps" and "Digital Shorts" short film programmes, mentoring emerging screenwriters, and has lectured at Queens University Belfast and South Eastern Regional College on screenwriting and creative writing.

Richard then moved into writing for television, with a number of TV series optioned and in development. He has a number of spec feature scripts available, and a couple of fully formed TV drama series concepts.

Richard has returned to prose fiction and has completed a novel set in the murky world of agent handling. As of 2025 he's creating a new series of historical novels featuring an expert swordsman in Elizabethan Ireland, based on the work of the real-life master of defence, John Silver.
- IMDb mini biography by: Richard Crawford