Donna Hughes is an award-winning playwright and proud drama educator based in Fremantle, Western Australia. With over 25 years of classroom and department leadership experience, she sees the subject of drama as a powerful kinaesthetic mode of learning. What’s most exciting is seeing students bring complex ideas and inferential thinking to life in a 3D space. Donna believes in fostering curiosity and empowering young people to find their voice.

Donna writes for that under-served, tricky age bracket: Middle school. Her plays have been developed through the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) and Australian Plays Transform National development program. Trackers was the recipient of an Australian Writers Guild award (AWGIE) and is now published with Currency Press. Her play for teens, Disconnected, is published with Australian Plays Transform. Both plays have been performed by schools around Australia. Hit Delete, was awarded the Martin Lysicrates Prize and commissioned in 2022. Donna is a member of the emerging writer’s group, Forge, at Black Swan State Theatre Company.

Donna’s play, Treading Water was shortlisted for the Stoddart playwright Award and The Pact was shortlisted for the Lane Cove Literary Award. Her short film Isolation in Lockdown produced by Voices of Women, was nominated for the New York Independent Cinema Awards and for Outstanding Achievement in Writing by the WA Screen Culture Awards 2022. Her short plays, It Was Tuesday and The Next Stop were shortlisted in Australia, the United Kingdom, Dubai and Vietnam. The Next Stop won the Best Writer Award at the Short + Sweet Festival, Hollywood.