Hannie Rayson is an Australian playwright, screenwriter and newspaper columnist. She is the author of sixteen plays including Hotel Sorrento, Falling from Grace, Scenes from a Separation (co-written with Andrew Bovell), Life After George, Inheritance, Two Brothers, The Glass Soldier, The Swimming Club, Extinction, and Noah’s Daughter. Extinction was commissioned by The Manhattan Theatre Club in New York through the Alfred P Sloan Foundation. She has been performed throughout Australia at all the major theatre companies. Internationally her plays have been staged in London’s West End, The New National Theatre of Tokyo, The New Kobe Oriental Hall, Japan, Helsinki City Theatre, The Centaur in Montreal, The National Theatre of Slovenia and many theatres in the UK, Europe and New Zealand. Hannie’s plays have won AWGIE Awards; Green Room Awards; Helpmann Awards; NSW Premier’s Literary Awards; Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and the Age Performing Arts Award. Life After George was the first play ever to be nominated for the prestigious Miles Franklin Award. Hannie’s memoir, Hello, Beautiful! was published by Text Publishing in February 2015. She adapted the story for a one-woman show, which she performed also called Hello, Beautiful! which opened at The Malthouse Theatre in May 2016 and toured nationally to 37 theatres. Hannie also writes for newspapers and magazines and in 1999 she won the Magazine Publishers’ Society of Australia, Columnist of the Year Award. Her television scripts include Sloth (ABC, Seven Deadly Sins) and she co-wrote two episodes of the award-winning series Seachange (ABC/Artists Services). A feature film of Hotel Sorrento (1995) was nominated for ten Australian Film Institute Awards, winning two, including Best Screenplay adaptation.