DEBRA OSWALD is screenwriter, playwright and fiction author. She was the co-creator and head writer for series 1-5 of the award-winning Channel Ten series Offspring. Oswald won the 2011 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for the Offspring telemovie script and won the 2014 AACTA for Best Television Screenplay for an episode in series 4. Her other television credits include award-winning episodes of Police Rescue, Palace of Dreams, The Secret Life of Us, Sweet and Sour and Bananas in Pyjamas. Oswald’s stage plays have been produced around Australia. Gary’s House, Sweet Road and The Peach Season were all shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Award, and her play Dags has had many Australian productions. Gary’s House has been performed in translation in Denmark and Japan. Mr Bailey’s Minder broke the Griffin Theatre’s box office record in 2004, toured nationally in 2006, and was produced in Philadelphia in 2008. Oswald has written three plays for Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP): Skate, Stories in the Dark (NSW Premier’s Literary Play Award) and House on Fire. She is the author of three ‘Aussie Bite’ books for kids, including Nathan and the Ice Rockets, and six novels for teenage readers including The Redback Leftovers and Blue Noise. Her first novel for adults, Useful, was published by Penguin in 2015. Oswald is developing her own new television series for Essential Media and writing her next novel for Penguin Random House.