Foxtel announced winner of 2019 Screenwriting Scholarship

Foxtel and AFTRS today announced Trudi Houston Refshauge as the recipient of this year’s $20,000 Foxtel Screenwriting Scholarship for Diverse and Under-represented Students.

The scholarship has been awarded over the past three years to support an outstanding Master of Arts Screen: Screenwriting student, from students from diverse cultural, ethnic or socio-economic backgrounds, or from otherwise underrepresented minority groups.

Carly Heaton, Foxtel’s Executive in charge of drama production, said, “Foxtel believes that building a thriving and vibrant media, arts and film environment in Australia demands investing in a rich diversity of talented Australians drawn from every corner of every community. Through our relationship with AFTRS we are able to expand that diversity and support a new generation of screen writers through the Foxtel Screenwriting Scholarship for Diverse and Under-represented Students. We are delighted to award Trudi with this year’s scholarship and look forward to seeing her talents grow.”

AFTRS CEO Neil Peplow said, “Trudi shows exceptional writing talent and, with her wealth of life experience, she is keen to write stories that older women want to see and to offer perspectives that represent both regional and rural Australia.”

Trudi Houston Refshauge lives and works from a cattle property in regional NSW and is, by her own definition, as a regional woman in her 50s, from a group underrepresented in the screen industry.

Trudi commenced her Masters this year and she may also have the opportunity to undertake a work attachment at Foxtel.

While working on her family’s property at Woodstock in the Central West of NSW, Trudi has also focused on developing her writing skills. She won the Banjo Patterson Short Story Writers Competition and was lauded by her lecturers as one of the best on-line students they had taught when completing an AFTRS Open screenwriting course.