Alexa Wyatt
Genres: All genres for feature films, television and plays
Alexa is a script producer, series creator, writer, editor and story consultant totalling over a thousand hours of Australian drama including Janet King, Rescue Special Ops, All Saints, McLeod’s Daughters, Water Rats, Heartbreak High, Police Rescue, etc. She wrote top ten Netflix series Mako Mermaids and The Bureau of Magical Things, also Nina and Olga for RAI TV. She is writing a biopic for Mushroom Studios and is co-writing a psychological horror feature funded by Screen Canberra. She has two series optioned by Beyond Entertainment and is writer/script producer on a dramedy optioned by Easy Tiger. She is script producing a First Nations’ series developed and funded by SAFC and has developed a sci-fi series with Lina Foti of Kreiworks and Dan Curry, VFX designer for Star Trek. She is the recipient of a Distinctly Australian Script Editing Fellowship, has worked as a script editor on numerous feature film projects, and as a script assessor for Screen Tasmania, the South Australian Film Corporation and the Australian Writers’ Guild. She has run numerous seminars on writing for Screenworks and is a tutor for dramatic writing at NIDA. She is also a playwright with productions at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, the Stables Theatre, Sydney, Melbourne Writer’s Festival, Bridewell Theatre, London and Northern Light Theatre Company, Canada in January 2021.
Chelsea Cassio
Genres: Television, feature film, short form series, drama, science-fiction, horror, mystery, and crime.
After graduating from film school, Chelsea sold her first short film, Imaginary Friend, to ABC (Australia), which aired over a three-year period. She has since written for shows such as The Doctor Blake Mysteries (December Media/ABC/BBC), Secret Bridesmaids Business (7 Network/Channel 4) and Miss Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries (7 Network/Acorn TV). In 2019, Chelsea’s crime series Cloak received significant draft development funding from Victoria Screen, where she worked extensively with her future producer Simon Mirren (Versailles, Criminal Minds). Chelsea now has several original television concepts, all in active development with Easy Tiger (Australia), Atlantic Nomad (USA), Mediawan (France) and Federation Entertainment (France). In 2020, she was invited to join the Imagine Impact community – a global content accelerator program launched by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. In 2022, she was selected to pitch her original drama concept on stage at Series Mania in Lille, France. In other story roles, Chelsea has worked as a lecturer for RMIT’s Advanced Diploma in Screenwriting, as a Development Script Producer at Network Seven, as a script reader for the Script Writer’s Network in Los Angeles, and as an industry assessor and mentor for Victoria Screen, Screen Australia (Gender Matters), Australian Writers’ Guild and Writers Victoria.
Chryssy Tintner
Genres: Drama, western, rom-com, musicals, diversity stories
Chryssy Tintner is a screenwriter, development executive, script editor and script assessor. Following her Master of Film Arts (Motion Picture) at USC, Chryssy worked in LA, Europe and Australia, with the William Morris Agency, Thompson Street Pictures at 20th Century Fox, Rosebank Films, Octagon/World 2000 at Ardmore Studios in Ireland, and as a freelancer with over 200 production companies. Chryssy is writing two screenplays on commission and completes script assessment work for the Australian Writers’ Guild, Script Central and film funding bodies.
Derek Strahan
Genres: TV series, feature films, social comedy, musical comedy, crime, science-fiction and documentary.
Strahan’s work as both writer and composer has covered numerous agenda. For three years (1964-66) he worked for TV, scripting and directing documentary film features for New Zealand television including a six-part series on Sir Edmund Hilary’s aid work in the Himalayas. In Sydney, he worked for five years as a contract scriptwriter for the TV serial Number 96 (1970-75), and also wrote episodes for Cop Shop, Glenview High, Chopper Squad, Carrots! (a children’s program on Channel 7), and in 1986 Flying Start (an ABC series on small business) & scripted corporate videos for Broadcom. Three feature films have been produced from his scripts and for which he also wrote music: Leonora (1985), released on video & cable in the US & Europe, and shown on Channel 9 in 1996; Fantasy (1990) for Columbia Tri-Star video, both of which he co-directed. He also scripted and acted the lead in Inspector Shanahan Mysteries – Cult of Diana shown on Channel 9 in 1996. His one-Act play Triple Six was staged as a drama student-qualifying production at Newcastle University in the early 1990s. His three-part web miniseries, Anatomy of Murder, written for Cambridge International, was shown on Channel 9 in April 2017. From 1982 to 1984, Strahan worked as script assessor for AFTRS, and gave eight and 16-week courses in scriptwriting for the NSW Institute of Technology. From 2004, he has worked for the Australian Writers’ Guild having assessed over 200 scripts, comprising TV drama, screenplays, stage drama & musicals. He has conducted a four-day seminar on Writing Film Treatments for Associate AWG Members and has been a panelist for an Associates evening on Script Writing.
Donna Abela
Genres: All genres for stage and audio works, stories from culturally diverse or marginalised communities
Donna has written award-winning scripts for audiences of all ages. Her works have won four AWGIE Awards for Stage and Radio, the Griffin Playwriting Prize, the Human Rights Award for Drama, and been nominated for the AWGIE Award for Children’s Theatre, the NSW Premiers Literary Awards Multicultural Prize, and the UK’s Newham Lesbian and Gay Writing Out Awards. Her plays for young people include two touring shows written for Kim Carpenter’s Theatre of Image – Monkey: Journey to the West and Tales From The Arabian Nights. Recent work includes Golden Joinery, an essay on trauma-informed creative practice (Sydney Review of Books), and the audio documentary Missing Magdalens (ABC Radio National). Donna also has extensive experience in script development. She has worked as a script assessor, dramaturge and mentor for theatre companies and script development agencies such as the Australian National Playwrights’ Centre, Playworks Women Performance Writers Network, and Playwriting Australia. Since writing her first play for PYT Fairfield (aka Powerhouse Youth Theatre), a company she co-founded in the culturally diverse heartland of Western Sydney, Donna has been committed to the development of culturally diverse writers and stories, and is an advocate for diverse representation, stories, forms, and development models. She studied at UTS, NIDA, UNSW, and at UoW where she completed a doctoral thesis entitled Dialogic Interplay: a Strategy for Representing Difference and Cultural Diversity on Stage. She teaches at Excelsia College and NIDA, and designed and delivers the National Theatre of Parramatta’s year-long Page to Stage playwrighting course.
Emma J. Steele
Genres: All genres for feature films and television.
Emma has over a thousand hours of Australian TV drama credits and experience as creator, consulting producer, script producer, supervising script editor, script editor, story consultant, story editor and writer. Her credits include the 2024 Daytime Emmy nominated Neighbours (Amazon Prime). She was the sole script editor on the multi-award nominated and winning first series Wentworth (Netflix), including writing the first season’s finale. She was the story editor and script editor for the second season of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (Netflix). Emma has optioned a 1hr horror series to a US producer, developed TV series in the US, Australia and New Zealand for production companies, broadcast networks, cable and streamers and is developing a horror feature for a US studio. Emma has been a guest lecturer for the Advanced Diploma of Screenwriting RMIT, a script assessor for Roadmap Writers (US) and has been nominated twice for an Australian Writers Guild award.
Greg Woodland
Genres: Drama, crime, rom-com, war, sci-fi.
Greg Woodland has been a script editor or script assessor and consultant for all Australian film funding bodies and the AWG since 1998, assessing over 1000 feature scripts. A directing graduate of AFTRS, Greg’s award-winning films and documentaries have screened nationally and internationally at over 60 film festivals and many TV stations. Greg has been a judge for several film festivals including Sydney Film Festival and the AWGIE Awards. His screenplays have won many awards including the Inscription Open Script Award, a Varuna Writers Fellowship and AWGIE Award. He has taught scriptwriting at UTS, NIDA, Metro Screen, and other Sydney film schools. His script editing credits comprise many genre and drama feature scripts including The Bet, Needle, Cold Turkey, and several Project Greenlight and Monte Miller Award finalists.
Holly Alexander
Genres: Relationship dramas and comedies, crime/thriller and children’s/family content across film and television
Holly Alexander is an AWGIE-nominated scriptwriter with more than 15 years’ experience in scripted television. An in-demand writer, story consultant and script editor, she has worked across numerous formats including one-hour drama, half-hour serial, and kids’ TV (factual and scripted). Recently, Holly was script editor, writer and story consultant on Rock Island Mysteries, a half-hour live action kids’ show for Paramount+. Prior to that, Holly was development script producer on a one-hour family drama with Lonestar Production Group. For many years, she wrote for iconic Australian soap Neighbours, on which she also worked as a storyliner, script editor and supervising script editor. Previously, Holly was a Development Executive at the Australian Children’s Television Foundation where she provided guidance and feedback on shows including Crazy Fun Park, Hardball, Little J & Big Cuz, First Day, Are You Tougher Than Your Ancestors and Space Nova from early development through to production. She has worked in the script departments of high-rating dramas including City Homicide, Rush and The Time Of Our Lives and contributed to writers’ rooms for Seven Studios, Fremantle Media and Matchbox. Holly’s own projects have received development funding from VicScreen and she was selected for a writer’s placement with Carver Films through VicScreen’s Key Talent Register. Trained in the fast-paced world of procedurals and soap, Holly knows what makes a good story. Her exciting slate of original work includes family feature films, half-hour and one-hour adult drama series, all of which are driven by Holly’s passion for exploring unconventional characters and narratives with authenticity and heart.
Jacklyn Bassanelli
Genres: drama, comedy-drama, sci-fi and thriller
Jacklyn Bassanelli is an award-winning Naarm/Melbourne-based Screenwriter and Script Editor. Most recently, Jacklyn has written the 6 part crime-thriller audio drama You Don’t Know Me for SCA and Listnr. Jacklyn was Script Editor on Halifax: Retribution for Beyond Lonehand and Channel Nine, and a participant in the Scripted Ink / Screentime Hothouse initiative, in conjunction with Screentime and Channel Nine, developing two original drama ideas. Jacklyn’s audio drama project, Evergreen, was developed by the ABC through the Fresh Start initiative. In 2018, Jacklyn won AWG’s Laugh Out Loud Comedy Pilot competition with her comedy/drama script Preconception, further developing the project with support from Scripted Ink. Jacklyn wrote seven episodes of the animated children’s series Kitty is Not a Cat for BES and Channel 7 and developed her television series, Evergreen, with support from Film Victoria and Scripted Ink. She has participated in writers’ rooms for Ruby Entertainment, Beyond and LateNite Films, and completed a season-long writing internship on the long-running Foxtel drama Wentworth, with support from Film Victoria and Scripted Ink. Jacklyn has four original projects on AWG’s Pathways Showcase, developing works across drama, sci-fi and comedy.
Jane Allen
Genres: You can throw me any kind of story for any medium you like – screen, stage, audio, backyard…
Jane was co-executive producer and writer on In Our Blood (Hoodlum Entertainment), a musical drama about Australia’s response to AIDS in the 1980s, for the ABC. She also produced and was the lead writer for the ABC legal drama, Janet King – the first Australian primetime drama to have a lesbian lead character. Janet King was a spinoff of prosecution drama Crownies, on which Jane produced and led the writing team. She was also a writer and producer on the Indigenous sci-fi ABC series Cleverman. Jane’s other recent credits include Last King of the Cross, Troppo, 100% Wolf: Legend of the Moonstone, Halifax: Retribution, The Heights, The New Legends of Monkey, and The Unlisted. She is a past script assessor for Screen NSW, has taught screenwriting at a variety of organisations, and has acted as a mentor for emerging writers for many years. Jane was the 2018/19 Australian Antarctic Division artistic fellow, spending three months as a summer expeditioner at Mawson Research Station. Jane’s previous writing credits include Secret Daughter, Love Child, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, Tricky Business, McLeod’s Daughters, The Secret Life of Us, Blue Heelers, Stingers, MDA and children’s series Sam Fox: Extreme Adventures.
Lachlan Philpott
Genres: New forms and non-linear structures, character driven writing, queer writing, theatre for young audiences [ages 6-26] and plays that bear witness to history (especially if they provide a new or different perspective).
Lachlan has worked extensively as a dramaturg and teacher at theatre companies, schools and festivals. He is a proudly queer writer and dog person. Lachlan is a writer of plays, lyrics, screen and TV. Some of his plays include Bison, Bustown and Cake Daddy plus many more. Lachlan’s plays have been performed across Australia and internationally including at: Sydney Theatre Company, The Lark New York, Sydney’s Mardi Gras Festival, Hothouse Theatre, Australian Theatre for Young People and many others. In 2013 he was awarded an Australia Council Cultural Leadership grant to study new play development models in several countries and an Australia Council Keesing Literature Residency in Paris in 2016-17 and in 2018. Lachlan was the inaugural Australian Professional Playwright Fulbright Scholar and Chair of the Australian Writers’ Guild Playwrights’ Committee between 2012 and 2015.
Margaret Davis
Genres: Play scripts, physical theatre, musicals, and multi-form projects
Margaret Davis is a writer for both theatre and film. She has had extensive experience as a theatre director, including premiere productions of seminal Australian plays. She has won numerous awards, fellowships, and commissions for her own works, which include mainstage, physical theatre and plays for young audiences. She has lectured at the University of Western Sydney and the University of Wollongong and is currently lecturing in Film and Theatre for the BA in Performance at AADA. She has broad experience as a script assessor and dramaturg and completed the inaugural Script Assessment Training Program with AWG and AFTRS.
Mary Rachel Brown
Genres: Character-driven narrative, linear narrative, comedy and drama, scripts with political themes, theatre for young people (16 to 25), pitch documents.
A dramaturg and script assessor, Mary has worked for many leading theatre companies, including Griffin Theatre, Canberra Youth Theatre, Merrigong, Australian Theatre for Young People and Hot House Company. Mary has an Associate Diploma in Performing Arts and is the recipient of many National Playwriting Awards. Her most recent work was writing for the 2020 Sydney Festival production of Betty Blokk Buster Reimagined for Redline. Mary’s most notable work is The Dapto Chaser which was commissioned and developed by Merrigong and reproduced by Apocalypse Theatre for Griffin Independent, Glen Street Theatre and Hothouse. Australian Theatre Live’s filmed version of the production was screened at Dendy Cinemas and on ABC iView. Mary’s TV credits include sketch writing for The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting for ABC and several episodes of Home and Away for the Seven Network.
Max Conroy
Genres: TV and feature film, drama, action/adventure, comedy, thriller/mystery, horror, sci-fi, historical
Max is an experienced screenwriter with a passion for film and television. Recently, he wrote on multiple seasons of the popular drama series, Wentworth. He has also worked as a script editor on a diverse range of programs, including the drama series Wentworth, murder mystery Mr. & Mrs. Murder and kids sci-fi Nowhere Boys. Apart from developing projects for the big and small screens, Max assesses scripts for the U.S. screenwriting competition, The Page Awards, and enjoys providing incisive, actionable feedback to writers on their film and TV scripts.
Michele Lee
Genres: Comedy, stories about women, narrative-based and character-driven work, writing from people of colour.
Michele Lee is an Asian Australian artist, of Hmong background. She works across theatre, live art and screen while also mentoring younger writers through the city of Melbourne’s Australian Theatre for Young People. Michele’s work has gone on to win numerous awards, including the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and AWGIE Award for her play Rice. She also received five nominations at the Green Room Awards for her play Going Down and was one of four winners in AWG / Audible’s On Air Podcast Writing Competition for her script How Do I Let You Die.
Nicholas O’Hara-Boyd
Genres: Feature films, TV, plays, comedies, drama, romance, and thrillers
After graduating with a Bachelor of Film and Television from Bond University, Nicholas was commissioned to write a romantic-comedy screenplay for a Chinese production company. He has since provided coverage and script analysis for production and distribution companies in the UK and USA, as well as an array of independent producers and writers. He is currently developing two feature films.
Ross Mueller
Genres: Comedy, Drama, Dramedy, thriller/mystery, TV, audio and play scripts
Ross Mueller is an established Australian writer. In 2002 Mueller won the Australian playwright’s position at the prestigious International Residency of the Royal Court Theatre in London. In 2009 he was the winner of the New York New Dramatists Playwright exchange in New York City. In 2020 he was the winner of the Georgi Markov Award as part of the BBC International Audio Drama Prize. His plays have been performed at Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, Malthouse, Griffin and Hothouse. In 2022 his comedy, A Simple Act of Kindness premiered to rave reviews at Red Stitch Actors Theatre and was nominated for most Outstanding New Writing in the Victorian Green Awards. He has created content for audio and radio and he has written about politics, arts and sports as a freelancer for Arts Hub, Crikey and News Corp. He holds a Master in Writing For Performance from VCA and he has worked as a teacher, tutor and assessor in the tertiary education sector and been a guest lecturer at University of Melbourne, VCA. He is the co-founder and other half of Pelican Nation. He is represented by Sharne McGee at Liberty Management. Current original television projects include: Theory of Structures: Archipelago Productions [dramedy series]. Troubled Youth: Northern Pictures [comedy series]. LOVE.CHAOS.THEORY: Princess Pictures [dramedy]
Scott McConnell
Genres: Drama, war, adventure, action, thriller, westerns, sci-fi, historical, biopics, romance
Scott has worked in story for 30 years and is a former Los Angeles producer who is now a writer and story consultant in Australia. He is experienced in both the fiction and non-fiction arenas. In Los Angeles, he performed script analysis for Nu Image, The Samuel Goldwyn Company, Hallmark, New World Television, Sundance Institute, and the Roger & Julie Corman companies, among others. A member of the Producers Guild of America, Scott’s credits include showrunner/supervising producer on Live Life and Win! and co-writing the reality series Hollywood Boot Camp. Scott enjoys helping develop Australian stories to have universal themes and local colour and finding solutions to story problems. His specialties include concept, character and theme development, plot structure and the application of dramatic devices. As an Australian American, Scott can vet the authenticity of your Australian or American story.
Serhat Caradee
Genres: Drama, thriller, horror, romance, comedy, sci-fi and romantic comedies
An award-winning Australian writer and director, Serhat’s films have screened at over 50 local and international film festivals, winning numerous prizes and awards. He recently co-wrote, directed, and produced the feature film A Lion Returns. His first feature Cedar Boys, won the Audience Award at the 56th Sydney International Film Festival, screened at 5 international film festivals and garnered many nominations and accolades in Australia, including AWG, ADG, IF and AFI (AACTA) nominations for Best Original Screenplay. Serhat also comes from an extensive background in theatre, drama and performing arts studies. His vast array and experience covers all aspects of working on stage, TV and film as a writer, script editor and story consultant.