Eight Australian telemovies or television mini-series are battling it out for top honours in this year’s AWGIE Awards for performance writing.

Awards for the best original and best adapted screenplays for Australian feature films have nine top-flight nominees. There are 13 nominations in the five theatre categories.

The Australian Writers’ Guild (AWG) says nominations in the 25 categories for the 48^th Annual AWGIE Awards reflect the abundance of outstanding work currently being produced in Australia.

The AWGIEs are the only Australian awards judged exclusively by writers on the basis of the script – the writer’s intention – rather than the finished production.

Nominees for best original telemovie are Steven McGregor for Redfern Now: Promise Me and Katherine Thomson for House of Hancock, while Christopher Lee’s Gallipoli and Jan Sardi and Mac Gudgeon’s The Secret River contend for best adaptation in a television miniseries.

There are four nominees for original television mini-series: The Principal by Alice Addison and Kristen Dunphy; The Kettering Incident by Vicki Madden, Andrew Knight, Cate Shortland and Louise Fox; Deadline Gallipoli by Jacquelin Perske, Stuart Beattie, Shaun Grant and Cate Shortland; and Love Child: Series 2 from Tim Pye, Cathryn Strickland, Chris McCourt, Jane Allen and Tamara Asmar.

In the two categories for original and adapted feature films, the nine nominations are: Paper Planes by Robert Connolly and Steve Worland; The Water Diviner by Andrew Knight and Andrew Anastasios; The Little Death by Josh Lawson; Ashby by Tony McNamara; Skin Deep by Monica Zanetti; Sucker by Ben Chessell and Lawrence Leung; Ruben Guthrie by Brendan Cowell; The Last Cab to Darwin by Reg Cribb with Jeremy Sims; and Holding the Man by Tommy Murphy.

For the Stage, Donna Abela’s Jump for Jordan was one of three nominations, alongside Jada Alberts’ Brothers Wreck and Kate Rice’s Monologue for a Murderer.

This year’s Awards Ceremony will be again hosted by the AWG’s own comedy writing legend Ian Simmons at Doltone House, Hyde Park, Sydney, on Friday 11 September.

The AWG will also be awarding up to $100,000 of prize money to the recipients of the 2015 Australian Writers’ Foundation Playwriting Award, supported by Kim Williams, and the David Williamson Prize, given in recognition of excellence in writing for the theatre.

You can find a complete list of nominees plus more information about the Australian Writers Guild HERE

PUBLISHED AT WWW.AWG.COM.AU