HANNIE RAYSON has established a reputation for complex dramas written with wit and humour. A graduate of Melbourne University and the Victorian College of the Arts, she has an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from La Trobe University. Her plays have been extensively performed around Australia and internationally. They include Mary, Room to Move, Hotel Sorrento, Falling From Grace, Competitive Tenderness, Life After George, Inheritance, Two Brothers, The Swimming Club, Extinction and Noah’s Daughter. She has been awarded two Australian Writers’ Guild Awards, four Helpmann Awards, two NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award as well as the Age Performing Arts Award. She also wrote Scenes from a Separation with Andrew Bovell. For television she has written Sloth (ABC, Seven Deadly Sins) and co-written two episodes of SeaChange (ABC/Artists Services). A feature film of Hotel Sorrento, produced in 1995, was nominated for ten Australian Film Institute Awards. In 1999 she received the Magazine Publishers’ Society of Australia’s Columnist of the Year Award for her regular contributions to HQ magazine. Rayson made playwriting history when Life After George was the first play to be nominated for the Miles Franklin Award. Hannie adapted her memoir Hello, Beautiful! as a one-woman show, which she performed around Australia. In 2021, LA TheatreWorks adapted Extinction as an audio play.