Sue Woolfe
Sue Woolfe has worked as a teacher, scriptwriter, TV subtitle editor, documentary maker and cook. She is the author of the bestselling novel about mathematics and motherhood, Leaning Towards Infinity, published in five countries and won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in 1996 and was shortlisted for many other prizes, including the Commonwealth Prize and the prestigious US TipTree Prize. She re-wrote it for the stage, and it’s been workshopped in New York and produced at the Ensemble, Sydney. It’s currently optioned to an American film producer.
Sue Woolfe’s other works include the novel Painted Woman, published in Australia in 1989 and in translation in France in 2008 (also produced twice as a stage play) and co-authored with Kate Grenville Making Stories: How Ten Australian Novels Were Written.
After attaining her BA, Sue taught at high schools and TAFE, and then became a journalist for Choice Magazine. Following huge sales of her best-selling textbook, Language and Literature, she bought 16mm film equipment and set up her own editing suite and wrote/produced or directed 44 short documentary films, many specially commissioned, and all of which sold to commercial TV channels or to SBS. Now, at Sydney University, she teaches fiction writing for post-graduates by a revolutionary method she calls “dangerous writing”, and has designed and coordinates a course to highlight the work of those film underdogs, the screenwriters. In this course, local screenwriting celebrities talk about the triumphs and tribulations of the craft.
Sue lives in Sydney with her partner and daughter.
“His head was on one side, listening to me, and that was such sweeness to me, that he listened intently. No one, it seemed, has ever listened like he does.”
“It seemed like an original act, the very kindest act of being human, that he listened.”
“I wrenched open the windows. I stood while the cold air poured around my face like dark water, as if I was a rock and it was chiselling me into a new shape.”
“Does this wild errant need fade, like the colour of eyes do?”