Valentine was nominated for a Radio: Adaptation Award, and for Theatre: Community and Youth Theatre. She won for the latter and was then coshed from behind not once but twice, with the inaugural David Williamson prize for outstanding theatre writing, for which she probably pinched herself 25,000 times, once for every dollar in the cheque. Then she bookended the night with the Grand Prize, often a trap for a writer who has already taken to the bottle to celebrate an earlier victory.
But Alana remained perfectly composed, and told an appreciative audience that her theatre work is dedicated to confronting the real experience of ordinary lives, and articulating the realities of our times. She works very closely with particular communities, and is a relentless researcher. In screen terms, this is Loach rather than Luhrmann.
