Jingan Young

Dr Jingan MacPherson Young/Yang/Yeung is a Hong Kong born playwright, screenwriter, film scholar and journalist.

She is the daughter of John Dragon Young (1949–1996), a scholar of Chinese history and politician in Hong Kong.

Education
Jingan was educated at King's College London with a BA (Hons) in English and Film Studies and Kellogg College, Oxford with a Master of Studies in Creative Writing. She also holds a Foundation in Art from Parsons School of Design. In 2020, she successfully completed a PhD in Film Studies at King's College London.

Career
Her book Soho on Screen, the first study of London's Soho in film was published by Berghahn Books in May 2022 with a foreword by Peter Bradshaw.

She was previously a Lecturer in Screenwriting at Birkbeck, University of London.

Her play Filth or "Failed in London, Try Hong Kong" was the first play commissioned and produced in the English language by the Hong Kong Arts Festival and ran during the 42nd festival in March 2014. Her plays have been produced at the Vault Festival, Park Theatre, The Pleasance, and the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. These include I'm Just Here to Buy Soy Sauce, The 38th Parallel, Confucius Say Don't Use F* Tinder on a Full Moon and Life and Death of a Journalist, on the Hong Kong protests, which premiered in February 2020. The Guardian called it intensely smart...prickling with intelligence and anger.

Young was a member of the Royal Court Theatre Young Writers Programme and Soho Theatre Young Company Writers' Lab. In 2016 she was awarded the Michael Grandage Futures Bursary to write a play on Hong Kong's last Governor Christopher Patten. In 2020 she was part of the prestigious Channel 4 Screenwriting Programme and the inaugural Sky Studios Comedy Scheme in 2022.

Young was named as a writer to watch amongst 200 broadcasting stars of the future by the BBC and Idris Elba as New Talent Hotlist 2017.

She wrote episode 4 and was a story constant on the ITVX and Bad Wolf thriller Red Eye (2024 TV series) starring Jing Lusi and Richard Armitage.

Her feature film 'Number 2 Daughter' is currently in development with Bona Dea Films and the British Film Institute.