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Christian WhiteScreenwriter | Author | Co-Producer

Christian White is a Melbourne-based screenwriter, producer and author.

Christian co-wrote the psychological thriller feature film Apartment 7A alongside Natalie Erika James for Paramount Pictures starring Julia Garner and Dianne Wiest. Christian co-created and co-produced the hit Netflix series Clickbait with Tony Ayres. Clickbait was the most-watched streaming show globally for September 2021, and was nominated for an AACTA award for Best Drama Series. The series is inspired by Christian’s pilot script One Year Later, winner of the 2014 Australian Writers Guild Think Inside The Box Competition. Christian also wrote for the upcoming series Deadloch for Amazon, set for release in 2023.

Christian first feature film as co-writer was Relic, a psychological horror about a daughter, mother and grandmother who are haunted by a manifestation of dementia that consumes their family home. The film was directed by Natalie Erika James and stars Emily Mortimer and Bella Heathcote and was screened at Sundance and SXSW in 2020. It also premiered at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival. Relic earned Christian two Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) nominations for Best Film and Best Screenplay, an Indiewire Critics Poll nomination for Best Feature Film and a Critics Choice Super Award nomination for Best Horror Film.

Christian’s most recent novel, Wild Place (Affirm Press), was released in October 2021. Christian’s second novel, thriller/mystery, The Wife and the Widow (Affirm Press), was released at the end of 2019 to great critical acclaim. The Wife and the Widow won the 2020 Australian Crime Writers Association, Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction and also made the longlist for the Booksellers’ Choice Adult Fiction Book of the Year. Additionally, Christian has released two audio novellas through Audible, Second Skin and Still House, and is working on his third alongside his partner, Summer Roache.

His debut novel, The Nowhere Child, (Affirm Press) won the Wheeler Centre Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript in 2017. The publishing rights and media rights were both part of a bidding war. The book was shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards’ General Fiction Book of the Year; the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, and the Indie Book Awards’ Debut Fiction Book of the Year. It was the fastest selling debut novel by an Australian author which sold into more than 20 countries.

His short film Creswick, co-written with Natalie, won the 2017 Australian Writers Guild (AWGIE) Award for Best Short Form screenplay. His other shorts, Coma – which screened at Tropfest – and Small, screened at the opening night of Palm Springs International ShortFest.

Christian has a number of projects in development.

For a full CV please contact info@rgm.com.au.

Books

2018, Affirm Press

Her name is Sammy Went. This photo was taken on her second birthday. Three days later she was gone.’ On a break between teaching photography classes, Kim Leamy is approached by a stranger investigating the disappearance of a little girl from Kentucky twenty-eight years earlier. He believes she is that girl.

At first Kim brushes it off, but when she scratches the surface of her family background in Australia, questions arise that aren’t easily answered. To find the truth, she must travel to Sammy’s home of Manson, Kentucky, and into a dark past. As the mystery unravels and the town’s secrets are revealed, this superb novel builds towards a tense, terrifying, and entirely unexpected climax.

Inspired by Gillian Flynn’s frenetic suspense and Stephen King’s masterful world-building, The Nowhere Child is a combustible tale of trauma, cult, conspiracy and memory. It is the remarkable debut of Christian White, an exhilarating new Australian talent attracting worldwide attention.

The Nowhere Child won the 2017 Wheeler Centre Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript, and was published in 2018 through Affirm Press, with rights also sold into 17 countries. The Nowhere Child was longlisted for the 2019 Indie Book Awards in the Debut Fiction category.

To buy The Nowhere Child, click here

2019, Affirm Press

Set against the backdrop of an eerie island town in the dead of winter, The Wife and the Widow is a mystery/thriller told from two perspectives: Kate, a widow whose grief is compounded by what she learns about her dead husband’s secret life; and Abby, an island local whose world is turned upside down when she’s forced to confront the evidence that her husband is a murderer. But nothing on this island is quite as it seems, and only when these women come together can they discover the whole story about the men in their lives.

Brilliant and beguiling, The Wife and the Widow takes you to a cliff edge and asks the question: how well do we really know the people we love?

To buy The Wife and the Widow, click here

2020, Audiobook (Audible Original Novella)

Stan Weir is mourning a tragic loss when he meets a mysterious nine-year-old girl, who claims to be the reincarnated spirit of his late wife. Marcy Keef is a single mother trying to make ends meet when her daughter Erin starts describing ‘past life memories’. Neither wants to believe Erin, but as violent secrets are revealed, the truth becomes harder to deny.

With echoes of Stephen King, this audio novella is a propulsive thriller about grief, guilt and truths better left unknown.

Narrated by Ellen Archer.

 

2021, Audiobook, (Audible Original)

Co-written with Summer De Roche.

Nostalgic for childhood summers a world away from his manic Melbourne life, Dave Johnson purchases a secluded house in a postcard-perfect coastal town. A savvy investment, he convinces his wife. One year on, and his seaside dream has turned into one big headache, with his tenants not paying rent, and now simply vanishing into thin air, leaving all their belongings behind. Summoned back to the house to inspect the abandoned property, Dave and his wife Lisa become trapped in the isolated spot after their car breaks down. Spooked and alone, they become lured into investigating what really happened to their mysterious tenants.

Narrated by Luke Arnold and Sibylla Budd

2021, Affirm Press

In the summer of 1989, a local teen goes missing from the idyllic suburb of Camp Hill in Australia. As rumours of Satanic rituals swirl, schoolteacher Tom Witter becomes convinced he holds the key to the disappearance. When the police won’t listen, he takes matters into his own hands with the help of the missing girl’s father and a local neighbourhood watch group. But as dark secrets are revealed and consequences to past actions are faced, Tom learns that the only way out of the darkness is to walk deeper into it.

Wild Place peels back the layers of suburbia, exposing what’s hidden underneath and attempts to answer the question: Why do good people do bad things?

From the international bestseller Christian White, Wild Place is a white-knuckle descent into a street near you.

To buy Wild Place, click here

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