Hello, Beautiful!
I am a playwright. I have spent thirty years pretending to be other people. I lie on the floor in my study and try to imagine I am someone else. It’s exhausting. Right now I am a dying man with drug-resistant tuberculosis. Earlier this morning I was his angry daughter and after lunch I plan to be his Asian wife. Often I am everyone at the same time.
This week we publish Hannie Rayson's memoir, Hello, Beautiful!: Scenes from a Life. Her works—including Hotel Sorrento, Inheritance and Life After George—have been performed around Australia and internationally. She has been awarded two Australian Writers’ Guild Awards, four Helpmann Awards, two NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award.
In Hello, Beautiful!, Hannie shines the spotlight on herself. This collection of stories radiate with great warmth and humour, capturing a life behind the scenes—full of tender moments, hilarious encounters and, inevitably, drama.
Read an excerpt at the Sydney Morning Herald, or discover a little about her relationship with husband, writer and broadcaster Michael Cathcart, another member of Text's extended family, from an interview with the Age. To meet Hannie in person, check-out her list of events here.
Praise for Hello, Beautiful!
‘So beautifully written, so funny, so insightful and so obviously written by a warm and appealing human being.’ David Williamson
‘Smart, witty, warm, self-effacing and hilarious.’ Kat Stewart
‘Hello, Beautiful! is as nourishing and delicious as homemade soup.’ Noni Hazelhurst
‘Hannie’s writing shows the extraordinary truth of ordinary life—that it is, in fact, anything but ordinary.’ Sigrid Thornton
