A memoir in parts, from one of Australia's best-loved playwrights. Hannie Rayson - writer, mother, daughter, sister, wife, romantic, adventuress, parking-spot optimist - has spent a lifetime giving voice to others in the many roles she has written for stage and television. In her new book, she shines the spotlight on herself. This collection of stories from a dramatic life radiate with the great warmth and humour that has made Hannie one of the best-known playwrights in the country. From a childhood in Brighton to a urinary tract infection in Spain, from a body buried under the house to a play on a tram, Hello, Beautiful! captures a life behind the scenes - a life of tender moments, hilarious encounters and, inevitably, drama. Hannie Rayson is a playwright and screenwriter. Her works - including Hotel Sorrento, Inheritance and Life After George - have been performed around Australia and internationally. She has been awarded two Australian Writers' Guild Awards, four Helpmann Awards, two NSW Premier's Literary Awards and a Victorian Premier's Literary Award. Her play Life After George was the first play to be nominated for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Hannie lives in Melbourne. ‘So beautifully written, so funny, so insightful and so obviously written by a warm and appealing human being.’ David Williamson ‘Smart, witty, warm, self effacing and hilarious. Each chapter is a shining gem—a passionate view, a formative experience, a mortifying anecdote. Hannie Rayson’s insight, honesty and ear for dialogue as one of Australia’s foremost playwrights is beyond dispute. Here she turns her talents to memoir and those closest to her with results so disarming and entertaining I didn’t want it to end.’ Kat Stewart ‘Hannie paints with vivid colours. Her development as a writer and a woman is richly portrayed, with all the shades of intense feeling and emotion that her dramatic characters share spilling from the page in a riot of evocative memories. Hello, Beautiful! is as nourishing and delicious as home-made soup.’ Noni Hazlehurst ‘Hannie’s writing shows the extraordinary truth of ordinary life—that it is, in fact, anything but ordinary. I was glued to this delightful book.’ Sigrid Thornton ‘Think of this as bottled sunshine….her anecdotes about family, friends and the community she belongs to, are told with perfect comic timing and one of the most acute ears in the business for dialogue.’ Caroline Baum, Booktopia Buzz