Writer and actor Morwenna Banks has won the Tinniswood Award 2015 for her audio drama Goodbye, a moving account of a friendship negotiating cancer

Accepting the award she paid thanks to those who had taken a chance on a “cancer drama with laughs” and said Goodbye was her attempt “to make sense of the death of three friends”.

The Tinniswood Award is jointly administered by WGGB and the Society of Authors, with the prize of £1,500 donated by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society.

Set up in memory of English radio and TV comedy scriptwriter Peter Tinniswood, who died in 2003, it is an annual celebration of the best original radio drama script broadcast in the UK.

The 2015 Tinniswood Award was judged by Sue Teddern, Amanda Whittington and Kate Chapman, and presented by dramatist and novelist Nell Leyshon at the BBC Audio Drama Awards 2015 (a full list of the awards, presented by comedian Lenny Henry, can be found on the BBC website).

Introducing the Tinniswood Award, Nell Leyshon said, “radio drama for writers is a very beautiful thing… it has exquisite intimacy. It goes straight into the listeners’ head”.

Shortlisted work was Men Who Sleep in Cars by Michael Symmons Roberts and The Good Listener by Fin Kennedy.

The Tinniswood Award was announced alongside the Society of Authors’ new audio drama Imison Award, this year presented to E.V. Crowe for How to Say Goodbye Properly.

WGGB member Neil Gaiman won a BBC Audio Drama Award for Outstanding Contribution to Radio Drama.

Previous winners of the Tinniswood Award have included Hannah Silva, Colin Teevan, Murray Gold, Mike Bartlett and Rachel Joyce.