Luke Davies | |
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 Davies in 2013 | |
| Education | University of Sydney (BA) |
Luke Davies is an Australian writer of poetry, novels, and screenplays. His best known works are Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction (which was adapted for the screen in 2006) and the screenplay for the film Lion (2016), which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Davies also co-wrote the screenplay for the 2020 film News of the World and the 2026 film Tenzing .
Luke Davies grew up in the Sydney suburb of West Pymble. He studied arts at the University of Sydney. [1]
Davies' first poetry collection, Four Plots for Magnets, was published in 1982 by S. K. Kelen at Glandular Press. Long out of print, it was republished (with additional poetry and prose) by Pitt Street Poetry in 2013. [2]
Davies' other works include the novels Isabelle the Navigator and God of Speed, and several volumes of poetry – Four Plots for Magnets, Absolute Event Horizon, Running With Light, Totem and Interferon Psalms – as well as the chatbooks The Entire History of Architecture [...] and other love poems (Vagabond Press, 2001) [3] and The Feral Aphorisms (Vagabond Press, 2011). [4]
His children's book, Magpie, was published by ABC Books in 2010. [5]
Davies is also a film critic for The Monthly , and occasional book reviewer and essayist for other magazines and newspapers. In 2010, Davies won the John Curtin Prize for Journalism, at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, [6] for his 2008 essay The Penalty Is Death, [7] about the lives inside prison of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, two drug runners on Bali's death row. (They were executed by firing squad, to great public controversy, in 2015.) [8]
Davies co-wrote the screenplay for the 2006 film Candy with director Neil Armfield, based on his 1997 novel Candy . The film stars Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish as struggling heroin addicts. [9]
He wrote the screenplays for Air (a 2009 short film which he also directed), [10] Life , [11] Lion , [12] and the 2018 Felix van Groeningen drama Beautiful Boy . [13] He wrote the screenplay for the 2020 film News of the World , adapted from Paulette Jiles' novel, starring Tom Hanks . [14]
Davies wrote the screenplay for the 2026 film Tenzing , an international co-production directed by Australian filmmaker Jennifer Peedom. [15]
Davies overcame heroin addiction in 1990. [1]
In May 2017, the ABC Television program Australian Story profiled Davies' life in a two-part episode. [16] [17]
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