‘I have always loved writers,’ said Angela on being appointed the Guild’s first Executive Director in 1983. ‘Well, who could imagine running an organisation that looked after producers. Ugh.’
It was no accident that Angela would become a great manager of writers’ organisations. With a love of books and the theatre and a degree in English and classics from Sydney University, her first jobs were with a library (at Cambridge University in the UK) and as a meticulously organised field archaeological assistant (in Greece) before returning to Sydney to work for the Elizabethan Theatre Trust and the National Playwrights Conference. She joined the AWG as its administrator in 1979.
During the next ten years, Angela oversaw the transformation of the Guild from an organisation dependant on the voluntary contributions of a small but devoted group of members operating through a series of committees – doing everything from industrial negotiations, contract advice and holding the AWGIE Awards – to the properly staffed and resourced professional body writers enjoy today. The renaissance of the Australian film and television industry in the seventies and eighties was led by some of our most celebrated writers including David Williamson, Eleanor Witcombe, John Dingwall and Cliff Green, but the emergence of the AWG as a respected professional body was led by Angela.
At the end of 1989, Angela resigned her position to move to LA and became the Executive Director of the Writers Guild Foundation, the educational and charitable arm of the Writers Guild of America, West.
In that position, she greatly expanded the Foundation’s activities and in particular, its wonderful library, and organised sell-out monthly panels of notable screenwriters to share their craft and war stories with aspiring writers.
Through these activities and her marriage to former WGA West president, George Kirgo, (who had famously guided the WGA through the contentious 150-day strike against the studios in 1988) Angela came to know every writer of any consequence in LA – and most of the leading writers in New York and the UK as well. She had tea with Billy Wilder and had Bill Link (Colombo) and Georgia Jeffries (Cagney & Lacey) to dinner. Writers like David E. Kelley and David Mamet would cross to greet her in restaurants. Angela also secured many of our most notable guests for the National Screenwriters’ Conference – effectively exporting the expertise of her LA panels to Australia.
For twenty-four years, Angela’s expansive apartment in Brentwood became the go-to place for Australian screenwriters visiting Hollywood – her time, advice and contacts freely given – and for more than a few, her guest room as well. Her love and generosity towards Australian writers endured to the end.
A fabulous host and cook, Angela’s dinner parties in both Sydney and LA were legendary – with an endlessly changing guestlist of writers, ratbags and academics where one always met someone new.
Most of Angela’s friends and nearly all of her boyfriends were writers (although only one would become a Prime Minister). Her son Alec, who she had with Australian playwright, Mil Perrin, now works for the WGA in LA, continuing his mother’s commitment to the writing community.
Angela returned to Australia in 2013 to help with the care of her elderly mother and wrote a book, Barefoot in the Bindis, about her early life on a farm in Walcha, NSW, which went on to become a best-seller.
Insisting on monthly lunches to coax her reclusive writing friends away from their keyboards, Angela’s persistent social skills will be sorely missed by her life-long friends, Laura Jones, Geoffrey Atherden and myself.
Sadly, Angela and the National Screenwriters’ Conference she so passionately supported are no longer with us, but her commitment to writers and to the guilds of both countries will not be forgotten.
Angela Wales Kirgo died in Sydney of cancer on 28 July, 2026, surrounded by her loving family. She was 78. Angela is survived by her son, Alec Perrin, his wife Luana, her adored grand-daughter, Alice, her sisters Katrina and Philomena, her brothers Aidan, Robert and Duncan and their families.
– Roger Simpson
