Posie Graeme-Evans

Posie Graeme-Evans (b. Rosemary Graeme-Evans in Nottingham, England) is an Australian novelist, television and film producer, editor, screenwriter and director, best known for her children's programs and adult dramas. She has created many commercially successful and award winning programs throughout her career, but she is best known as creator of McLeod's Daughters, which during its 2001-2008 run won eight Logies, and Hi-5, which has won three Logies and five ARIA awards. Her other notable credits include Mirror, Mirror, which won an AFI and a GOFTA award. She was also Director of Drama for the Nine Network from 2002-2005 and has written five historical dramas, published by Simon & Schuster.

Graeme-Evans is the daughter of a novelist, Eleanor, and an RAF pilot. As a child, she traveled with her parents, to Egypt during the Suez Crisis and spent three years in 1960s Cyprus during Turkish-Greek Cypriot conflicts. She was educated at many schools including The Fahan School in Hobart, Tasmania, and the Wilderness School in Adelaide, South Australia. Whilst at Wilderness, she topped the State in South Australia in Ancient History in the Leaving Certificate. She married her first husband, Tim Jacobs, in 1971 and had her first daughter, Emma in 1972 while studying at Flinders university for her BA, awarded in 1973.

Early work

Her first job, at age 25, was with New Zealand TV props department and she went on to work at the Tasmanian Film Corporation as an assistant editor and then editor. Credits there include assistant editor (sound and picture) on Manganinie and Fatty and George, plus editing a number of documentaries. Work at the ABC followed including directing on 1982 Commonwealth Games, directing football and basketball and, also, field and gallery director for "Nationwide", the forerunner of the 7.30 report. Selected to be part of a course run by Alan Bateman to identify the ABC's next generation of Executive Producers – one of eight of the hundreds who applied nationally – she topped the course. Fellow attendees included Kris Noble, later Director of Drama, Nine Network and EP of Big Brother; Graham Thorburn, formerly Head of Film and Television, Australian Film, Television and Radio School; Helena Harris, who, with Graeme-Evans, later co-created Hi-5 and Ric Pellizari, long-time producer of Blue Heelers in its glory days and later, EP of Neighbours.

In 1983, Graeme-Evans moved to Sydney to direct episodes of ABC-TV music drama series Sweet and Sour (1984). "I was the worst of the five directors... I was over-confident and thought I had the material under control. I didn't... it was our first Christmas here; we had no friends, no family and I was distraught." She later went on to produce "Sons and Daughters" for Grundy, and "Raffertys Rules" for the Seven Network.

Graeme-Evans married her second husband Andrew Blaxland in 1990, the same year they co-founded their production company Millennium Pictures.

Her first success under the Millennium banner was as producer of the two AFI nominated children's series The Miraculous Mellops (1991–92). Then in the mid '90's came Mirror, Mirror co produced with Dave Gibson. "Mirror Mirror" was also nominated for best children's drama in both New Zealand and Australia. In 1996 it won an AFI for best new talent with Petra Yared and was nominated for best children's drama, losing to Spellbinder. and won Best Children's Drama in the annual Listener awards in New Zealand.

Graeme-Evans then went on to co-create and co-produce the many times Logie winning and Daytime Emmy nominated Hi-5, seen now in more than 80 countries worldwide. In 1997, she produced Doom Runners. Starring Tim Curry and commissioned by Nickelodeon and Showtime, this was a made-for-TV film about a group of children in a post-apocalyptic Earth trying to reach the last unpolluted place on Earth, New Eden. She was also creator and producer of the high-rating, much loved and many times awarded Australian drama series McLeod's Daughters (2000–08). She also produced the 1996 pilot TV movie of the same name starring Jack Thompson as Jack McLeod. Shown on mothers day 1996 the pilot became the highest rating Australian TV movie of all time. Her husband, Blaxland also worked on McLeod's Daughters as Executive in Charge of Production. During this period, she also co-wrote three best selling CDs of "Songs from the Series" of McLeod's Daughters with composer and long-time collaborator, multiple Aria winner, Chris Harriott.

In 2001, the Screen Producers of Australia awarded Graeme-Evans its inaugural Independent Producer of the Year award for her body of work and in late 2002, she was named alongside Meryl Streep by Variety Magazine as "one of 20 Significant woman working in film and television" in its annual worldwide survey.

Nine Network & novel writing

In December 2002, Graeme-Evans became Director of Drama for the Nine Network. She is also a board member of Screen Tasmania, the Tasmanian state governments funding body for film and television. Selling out their interest in Hi-5 in 2008, Graeme-Evans and Andrew Blaxland now divide their time between Tasmania and Sydney. In November 2005 she resigned from Nine to take up a new multi-book international deal from her publishers, Simon and Schuster in New York. At the current time, she is concentrating on her career as a novelist.

Books

Between October 2002 and June 2006 her first three novels, a trilogy set in 15th-century England during the tumultuous Wars of the Roses, were published worldwide. In October 2010 her fourth book, was again published nationally and internationally by Simon and Schuster, while her fifth book was published in early 2012.

• "The Innocent" (ISBN 0-7318-1120-8)
• "The Exiled" (ISBN 0-7318-1121-6)
• "The Beloved" (in the US, "The Uncrowned Queen") (ISBN 0-7318-1122-4)
• "The Dressmaker" (ISBN 978-0-7318-1472-5)
• "The Island House" (ISBN 978-0-7432-9443-0)