Plays for the stage include:The Memory of Water (1996) which premiered at Hampstead Theatre and transferred to the West End, winning the Olivier Award for ‘Best New Comedy’ in 2000; An Experiment With An Air Pump (1997) which won the Peggy Ramsay Award and was produced at the Royal Exchange, Manchester and Hampstead Theatre; Five Kinds Of Silence (The Lyric, Hammersmith, 2000); Ancient Lights (Hampstead Theatre, 2000); Mappa Mundi (National Theatre, 2002) and Enlightenment  (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 2005 and Hampstead Theatre, 2010). 

Shelagh won the prestigious Sloan Commission Award in New York in 2003, and in 2007, The Long Road played for two sell-out runs at Soho Theatre. 

Shelagh is currently under commission to write the third in her trilogy of ‘Cullercoats’ plays for Live Theatre.  The first two were A Northern Odessey, produced at Live Theatre in 2009, and Harriet Martineau Dreams Of Dancing, which Shelagh co-directed (with Max Roberts) at Live Theatre in Newcastle in 2016. Before You Go, her feature adaptation of The Memory of Water was filmed in 2001, directed by Lewis Gilbert, and starring Julie Walters.

Shelagh is also a prolific writer of radio drama, including eleven series of the wry comedy How Does That Make You Feel? for Woman’s Hour.  Her crime drama Broken English (Big Fish Productions) won ‘Best Original Series’ in the BBC’s 2021 Audio Drama Awards. 

TV includes: Downton Abbey (one ep, S1), and the production draft of Enid for Carnival/BBC, Case Sensitive for Hat Trick/ITV, and Shirley for BBC2. Shelagh’s crime series Murder in Provence (adapted from the Verlaque & Bonnet series of books by M.L. Longworth), for Monumental Television/Britbox UK/Britbox North America, aired on ITV1 in July 2022 (it is currently available on ITVX).  

TV commissions include: the pilot episode of Israeli changed format Stockholm, for Keshet, an adaptation of her own play Enlightenment for Red Planet, original drama Meadow Road for ITV Studios, an adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s novel Her Fearful Symmetry for Monumental, Witness A for World Prods, Inside Out for Touchpaper TV, and Exiles for WTTV/BBC.