Category Archives: News

Meet your winners from the 57th Annual AWGIE Awards

A musical satirising the 1975 constitutional crisis has taken home top honours at the Australian Writers’ Guild’s annual AWGIE Awards, with The Dismissal: An Extremely Serious Musical Comedy winning the prestigious $100,000 David Williamson Prize for Excellence in Writing for Australian Theatre.   It was the second win on the night for writers Blake Erickson and Jay James-Moody…

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Meet the nominees for the 57th Annual AWGIE Awards

An outstanding field of Australian screen and stage writers has been recognised as nominees for the 57th Annual AWGIE Awards, which will be presented by the Australian Writers’ Guild next month in Sydney.   Over 80 new works are celebrated from a cohort of Australian writers for stage, screen, audio and interactive. The nominees range from…

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Seeding Storytellers: Note-taking program

A note-taking training program for First Nations screenwriters What’s the opportunity? Seeding Storytellers is a note-taking training program for emerging First Nations Screenwriters, supported by Screenrights Cultural Fund and Final Draft, and delivered by Screenworks in partnership with the Australian Writers’ Guild. Designed to provide the appropriate professional development required for the role of a note-taker, Seeding Storytellers will…

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2024 Shane & Cathryn Brennan Prize Winners Announced

Seven Australian playwrights will share $60,000 in prize money following the announcement of the Shane & Cathryn Brennan Prize for Playwriting by the Australian Writers’ Guild today. Two plays were celebrated as joint winners in the Stage category, with Kathryn Marquet’s Aurochs sharing the prize with Steve Rodgers’ The Future is History. The judging panel described Aurochs, an examination of the…

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2024 Shane & Cathryn Brennan Prize: Shortlist Announced

The Australian Writers’ Guild congratulates writers shortlisted for the 2024 Shane & Cathryn Brennan Prize for Playwriting  Seven playwrights and their unproduced plays have been shortlisted for the prestigious Shane & Cathryn Brennan Prize. The prize was developed to discover and celebrate the best new scripts among Australian playwrights. The shortlisted scripts were narrowed down over…

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Australian play reaches new shores with French translation

The Australian Writers’ Guild is delighted that playwright, actor and screenwriter Matthew Whittet’s play Kindness will be translated into French for international audiences by the Paris-based Maison Antoine Vitez. The theatre translation organisation, which specialises in contemporary plays, has received funding via Creative Australia’s Translation Fund for Literature. The fund supports international and Australian publishers in translating works,…

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Endemol Shine Australia & Screen Australia announce early career writers program

Endemol Shine Australia (a Banijay Entertainment company) and Screen Australia have today announced the Early Career Writers Program, supported by the Australian Writers’ Guild.  A collaboration between Endemol Shine Australia and Screen Australia, the initiative will provide high-level training in a global calibre script department to four early to mid-career Australian writers who have the potential…

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The AWGIE Awards are open for entries!

The 57th Annual AWGIE Awards are officially open for entries! The AWGIE Awards recognise and reward the outstanding achievements of Australian performance writers and their contribution to Australia’s cultural landscape.  Entries are open to eligible screen, stage, interactive and audio works that finished principal photography or production or had a first performance between 1 January 2023 and…

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2024 Emerging Writers’ Awards winners announced

The Australian Writers’ Guild congratulates screenwriters Evlin DuBose and Cameron Williams who have tonight been announced as the winners of the 2024 Emerging Writers’ Awards. The Awards were announced tonight to a packed and buzzing room of senior writers, producers, industry folk and Guild members, who spent the evening mixing with the talented cohort of winning and shortlisted writers.  Evlin DuBose took home the Long Form Award…

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David Williamson Prize-winning play Horizon returns to the stage this month

The David Williamson Prize-winning play Horizon will return to the stage later this month at the Brisbane Powerhouse, running from July 31–August 10. Commissioned by Playlab Theatre and written by award-winning playwright Maxine Mellor, Horizon is an AWGIE award-winning script exploring the current political and social climate of Australia and where we are headed as a nation — who…

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