Zanna initially embarked on a career as an actor. While filming four episodes of Doctor Who, she chatted with Bonny Langford and drove Sylvester McCoy home, so that’s something. She's also been a bluecoat and a belly dancer.

Years ago, she did a stint of playwriting workshops at the Tricycle Theatre, tutored by award-winning playwright Bonnie Greer; trained as a journalist at London's City Lit; and wrote and performed in plays and musicals for a touring theatre company in Wales. She was a advertising copywriter and a feature-writer for mags for two decades; composes complex rhyming verse and has published a salacious novel under a pseudonym.

Her first full-length play, 'Caged Bird', reached the full reading stage of the BBC Writersroom and Papatango playwriting competitions and bagged her an agent, Joan Lane. A dark musical play for older children, 'Sprouts', is currently in development.

Her screenplay, 'Voyeuse', won Best Pilot Screenwriting at the Olympus Film Festival in LA in 2019, Best TV Series Pilot Screenplay at the New Renaissance Film Festival in 2020, and was officially selected for five others. In 2021, 'Honeylove', a drama pilot, was a semifinalist in the Emerging Scriptwriters contest.

'Seahorse', her first feature, was a 2nd Rounder at the Austin Film Festival and a FInalist in the ISA Fast Track Fellowship contest in 2022.