Playwright Suzie Miller’s critically acclaimed one-woman play Prima Facie has taken out the two highest honours at the Australian Writers’ Guild’s annual AWGIE Awards, winning the 2020 Major Award and the David Williamson Prize for Excellence in Writing for Australian Theatre.

CLIFF GREEN was a pioneer in Australian screenwriting and a central figure in the Guild’s early development. His television credits include his celebrated quartet, Marion, inspired by his time as a school teacher in the Mallee, and the sprawling adaptations, Power Without Glory and I Can Jump Puddles. His screenplay for Peter Weir’s Picnic At Hanging Rock remains a landmark in Australia’s film renaissance of the 1970s.

The 53rd Annual AWGIE Awards will be broadcast on Tuesday 8 December 2020 from 8pm (AEDT) / 7.30pm (ACDT) / 5pm (AWST) on YouTube.

AWGIE Award-winning screenwriter Shelley Birse has won the 2020 John Hinde Award for Excellence in Science-Fiction Writing for The Commons, with David Peterson’s feature script Untethered taking home the prize in the unproduced category.

The Australian Writers’ Guild is heartened by the Australian Government’s recently released Green Paper, which proposes long-overdue media industry reform. The announcement offers a glimmer of hope to a crippled screen industry that has been weakened by evolving consumer habits, inadequate support and diminished production due to COVID-19.