Louise is an author, playwright and poet. She has received many awards for her writing. Recent achievements include Thistledown Seed, shortlisted in the Dorothy Hewett Awards for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2018 and Light in her Eye which won the Todhunter Literary Award for drama in 2014 and performed at the Perth Fringe Festival in 2018. Her play, Potchnagoola, based on the mentoring relationship between the West Australian writer, Katharine Susannah Prichard and her concert pianist brother, David Helfgott, was commissioned and performed for the fiftieth anniversary commemoration of Prichard’s death in 2019.
Louise received an Australian Postgraduate Award and Edith Cowan University (ECU) Research Excellence Award to complete her PhD and her play, Frames, written as part of her doctoral project, was shortlisted for workshopping in the national Playwriting Australia competition and produced by Class Act Theatre for a successful season at the Subiaco Arts Centre in 2014. In 2013, she was the joint winner of the Magdalena Prize for feminist research for her thesis which included Frames.
Other credits include The Bridge (Mandurah Little Theatre, 2006) which was a finalist in New Musicals Australia in 2011 and A Closer Sky (Mandurah Little Theatre, 2004) which was nominated for an Australian Writers Guild Award in 2005. Her poetry anthology Can You Hold the Sun? was published by FreeXpresSion (2004). Many of her plays have been shortlisted in the Short and Sweet Festivals in Melbourne and Sydney (2007, 2008, 2009, 2011).
She has had publications in Australian Plays Transform, Free XPresSion, Dramatick Theatre Review and the Mandurah Murray Arts Council anthology and her plays, poetry and short stories have won prizes in literature competitions including the Master Writers Competition, Tom Howard Short Story Competition and Mandurah Murray Arts Council Literary Competition.
In earlier years, Who’s a Hero Anyway? was workshopped at the Australian National Playwrights Conference in 1979. A Bed of Roses was workshopped by the Writers/Performers Workshop in 1982 and was shortlisted for production in the Festival of New Works at Griffin Theatre in Sydney in 1991. A Bed of Roses also won first prize in the Mandurah City Festival of Arts in 1993. Diathesis was produced by the Young Australian League Drama Academy in 1992 and was performed at the State Theatre Festival and the Festival of Little Feet in Western Australia and was subsequently published by the Dramatick Theatre Review in 1992.
Louise has been a judge for the Australian Writers Guild awards and for the Tallus Prize and is on the West Australian Board of the Australian Writers Guild. She has been an invited guest at various literary events held at the Fellowship of Australian Writers, Katherine Susannah Prichard Centre and the City of Vincent library as well as numerous community organisations such as the Probus club, Inner Wheel Club and Senior Recreation Citizens WA.
Louise has been employed as a university lecturer/tutor for a drama course and she currently works part-time as a counsellor and music teacher. She also holds a B.Sc (Hons. Psych.) from the University of Western Australia and a Grad. Dip. Eng. from Curtin University.
Louise lives in Mandurah, Western Australia, and is currently working on a new novel. When she is not writing, she enjoys reading, music, seeing live theatre, bushwalking and travelling. She is also a voluntary coordinator of the Koolbardies Talking group which is a meeting place for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women.
louisehelfgott 