Graeme-Evans, Posie

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Graeme-Evans, Posie

PERSONAL:

Daughter of Frank (a Royal Air Force pilot) and Eleanor (a novelist) Graeme-Evans; married to Andrew Blaxland (a television producer).

ADDRESSES:

Home—Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

CAREER:

Author, 2004—. Australian Broadcasting Commission, director and field producer for news and current affairs, sports, and drama; producer, "Sons and Daughters," "Rafferty's Rules," "Elly and Jools," "The Miraculous Mellops," "Mirror Mirror," and "Doomrunners," 1997. Creator, with Helena Harris, of preschool series "Hi-5," 1998, and "Cushion Kids." Producer, with husband and business partner Andrew Blaxland, of "McLeod's Daughters," Millennium Television, 2001. Coauthor of eleven of the twelve songs on "McLeod's Daughters" CD.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Named Australian Independent Producer of the Year, Screen Producers of Australia, 2001; "Twenty Significant Women in Film and Television" citation, Variety, 2002.

WRITINGS:

The Innocent: A Novel, Atria Books (New York, NY), 2004.

The Exiled: A Novel, Atria Books (New York, NY), 2005.

The Uncrowned Queen: A Novel, Atria Books (New York, NY), 2006.

Freya Dane, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 2008.

SIDELIGHTS:

Posie Graeme-Evans, an Australian television producer, is also the author of several novels set in the mid-fifteenth century during the English Wars of the Roses, detailing the love between the fictitious Anne de Bohun and the historical King Edward IV. In the first book, The Innocent: A Novel, Anne begins her relationship with the already married king. Born a member of the royal Plantagenet house, Anne has been raised a peasant and, through her foster-mother, has developed a reputation for healing. She comes to the king's attention when the queen develops complications during pregnancy. But Anne is a member of a lineage whose claim to the throne is better than Edward's own—she is the unacknowledged daughter of Henry VI, the man whom Edward displaced as king of England—and, as such, she has a truly momentous decision to make: whether to seize her destiny or to cleave to the man she loves. For Edward's part, said Kristen LeBlanc in her Kliatt review of the novel, his decision is equally heartrending: "he truly cares for this intelligent young woman who helps to save his wife and daughter during a difficult birth."

Anne's and Edward's story continues in The Exiled: A Novel and The Uncrowned Queen: A Novel. By the time of the final volume, in 1470, Anne and Edward have a love-child and she is living in genteel exile in Brugge. Then Edward, forced from the throne by a twist of fate, flees to the Low Countries. From there he hopes to win assistance from his brother-in-law Charles, Duke of Burgundy. Anne is the person who can best provide the needed link between Charles and Edward. However, if she does so, she condemns her father to an uncertain fate. "Set amidst a turbulent period in European history," Janelle Martin wrote in the Eclectic Closet, "Graeme-Evans has created a compelling love story which manages to hold up amidst the political drama which drives the plot."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Daily Variety, December 18, 2002, Michaela Boland, "Nine Knights Drama Chief," p. 16.

Hollywood Reporter, December 17, 2002, Jacqueline Lee Lewes, "Staff Changes Continue at Nine: Drama Director Noble Latest to Exit under New Management," p. 66.

Kliatt, July, 2004, Kristen LeBlanc, review of The Innocent: A Novel, p. 18.

Publishers Weekly, April 17, 2006, review of The Uncrowned Queen: A Novel, p. 166.

Variety, March 22, 2004, Don Groves, "Taking Dramatic Turn: Auds Tune Out Reality to Turn On Oz, U.S. Skeins," p. 27.