Joe Willis

J​​​oseph ‘Joe’ Willis (Pronouns: They/Them/’Our Kid’) is a Queer, Yorkshire Genre Writer whose work explores the offbeat permeating the everyday (think finding blood in your pick and mix or discovering that the big Tesco is a gateway to hell).

Blending the grounded, the gothic and a darkly humorous, bittersweet tone to create macabre stories that deconstruct traditional power structures, relationships and settings to highlight the importance of non-conformity, self-discovery and found community instead. With their original spec scripts having led to them be chosen for the following schemes: BBC Writersroom Northern Voices, BBC Children’s Voices, Screen Yorkshire Flex, XR Stories Residency Labs and BAFTA Connect.

They have also written for surreal BBC Comedy Series The Amelia Gething Complex, had two horror short films funded by the BFI Network and their workplace comedy pilot ‘It’s My Party’, about out-of-work children’s entertainers, produced as part of Sky Studios Table Reads. They also regularly script edit/mentor for the BFI Network Script Labs and have previously worked many strange jobs including as a haunted house attendant, a projectionist and as a bear mascot that once set on fire (this last part wasn’t part of the job description).