Stephen Sewell

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Stephen John Sewell is a highly acclaimed Australian playwright, novelist and screenwriter who has produced some of Australia's most awarded plays and whose work has been widely performed both nationally and internationally.

Born in Liverpool, New South Wales, Sewell's first theatre experience was in the 1970s in the fringe theatre while he was studying Science at the University of Sydney, where his first play was staged in 1975.

In an interview in 2006 Sewell describes himself as an "angry writer" and a workaholic. Fascinated by the social world, his work ranges across many fields of study, from economics and politics to philosophy and psychology, and while he is considered a writer obsessed with dark themes, he is not himself a pessimist, saying, "No artist, no creator, ever sets forth without hope, even if the thing they create appears to be carved out of pitch black despair."

On 15 October 2012, Sewell was appointed Head of Writing at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, an appointment hailed by legendary director, Jim Sharman, as "an outstanding choice to guide the playwrights of the future."