For play­wright, jour­nal­ist, and movie junkie Julien Neaves, win­ning the BBC In­ter­na­tion­al Ra­dio Play­writ­ing Com­pe­ti­tion is as se­ri­ous as it is ful­fill­ing.

Five years ago, in 2018, Neaves sub­mit­ted his first ra­dio play, Tan­ty Get Ah An­droid!, for the same com­pe­ti­tion.

He was se­lect­ed as a fi­nal­ist but did not se­cure the prize. It was with­in this time frame that he sub­mit­ted work for sev­er­al lit­er­ary com­pe­ti­tions like the Com­mon­wealth Short Sto­ry Com­pe­ti­tion, but failed to ad­vance.

Neaves, in a phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said the loss in 2018 gave him the en­cour­age­ment to keep try­ing.

Neaves’ sec­ond ra­dio play, The Mighty Cor­beau, got the judges’ nod of ap­proval this time around. He topped this year’s com­pe­ti­tion cat­e­go­ry in Eng­lish as a First Lan­guage.

For those not fa­mil­iar, ra­dio plays are dif­fer­ent from stage plays as sto­ries are brought to life through the use of voice, tone, and spe­cial ef­fects.

Up­on re­ceiv­ing the news of his win in Sep­tem­ber via email, Neaves was ec­sta­t­ic.

“Since I was a boy, I dreamed of be­ing a writer. All my hopes, and dreams, and as­pi­ra­tions fi­nal­ly man­i­fest­ed. I was ec­sta­t­ic,” he said.

The Mighty Cor­beau, he said, has been with him since the 1990s. The sto­ry fo­cus­es on an el­der­ly ca­lyp­so singer who has been for­got­ten by the world. The sto­ry ex­plores themes of age­ing and men­tal health.

Neaves, 42, con­sid­ers him­self an old soul. “I tell peo­ple I’m an old soul; I con­nect with old­er peo­ple. I find that we as a so­ci­ety, Trinidad and the world, we push the el­der­ly to the side. We don’t re­alise they have so much knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence, and so much of that we’re just let­ting crum­ble and die,” he said.

With many tal­ent­ed writ­ers in the Caribbean and this coun­try wait­ing to have their sto­ries recog­nised and pub­lished Neaves lament­ed that many un­der­val­ue them­selves.

“As Tri­nis we un­der­val­ue our­selves. Be­cause we think, ‘I’m just a Trinida­di­an from this lit­tle dot in the world, no­body wants to read my sto­ry,’ they un­der­val­ue them­selves and write all these sto­ries, put in in a shelf, and it just dies,” he said.

Neaves urged as­pir­ing play­wrights and writ­ers, both young and old, to be­lieve in them­selves and sub­mit their work to lit­er­ary com­pe­ti­tions.

“I would say that no one is go­ing to be­lieve in you un­til you be­lieve in your­self. You have to put in the work. If you want to be a play­wright, read some plays, look at the struc­ture and try your hand. There are a lot of free com­pe­ti­tions, try it and see what hap­pens” he said.

The Mighty Cor­beau is sched­uled to be broad­cast in ear­ly 2024 by the BBC.