February 1, 2017
One of Murgon’s favourite daughters has won Australia’s richest literary prize … the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature.
Leah, who is probably better known as an award-winning actress, won the award for her play “The Drover’s Wife”.
Earlier in the night, the play also won the $25,000 Drama category award.
The announcements were made in Victoria on Tuesday night.
“The Drover’s Wife”, published by Currency Press, is a re-working of Henry Lawson’s famous short story and was staged at the Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney last year.
Leah admitted some of the audience were shocked by her drama.
“I don’t want to shock, I want to share,” she told The Australian newspaper.
“But it does shock, and that’s good. People walked out of the theatre in silence.”
She said the story was fictional but some of the details were based on the experiences of her family.
She told The Australian the aggressive language directed at one character was taken verbatim from a diary from her great-grandfather’s time.
Leah said she was now working on a screen adaptation of the play, which will have a whole new ending.
