Full circle moment as novel optioned by Ballina production company

AFTER beginning her writing career in the Northern Rivers as a teenager, author Emma Grey is thrilled that Ballina-based TV production company Magpie Pictures has optioned the screen rights to her novel Pictures of You.

Grey’s mum Claire Burnham was born in Bangalow and raised in Nashua, while her father Barrie Virtue was born in Lismore.

The couple moved to Canberra in 1964 after then MP for Richmond Doug Anthony invited Virtue to become his press secretary.

Anthony had just been appointed Minister for the Interior by prime minister Robert Menzies.

Now living near Queanbeyan, Grey traces her writing inspiration back to childhood visits with her grandmother in Bexhill, whose house was named Avonlea after the fictional town in Anne of Green Gables.

The day after watching the 1980s TV adaption of the much-loved book for the first time, she bought a notebook and pen from Bangalow Newsagency and began writing her first novel, about a 14-year-old city girl who moves to an outback sheep station.

While it never saw the light of day, Grey went on to write six books.

Her first adult novel, The Last Love Note, is set in the Byron Shire and was written in the wake of her husband’s unexpected death from heart disease.

After being published by Penguin Books Australia, the novel — which includes a scene at the Byron Writers Festival — was picked up by a New York publisher and reached the USA Today bestseller list.

Pictures of You, the novel now headed for the screen, was inspired by her daughter Hannah’s doctoral research into gendered violence and explores a storyline centered on coercive control.

The project caught the attention of Magpie Pictures after Grey’s Newcastle-based literary agent began discussions with founder Lois Randall.

“It feels deliciously full circle to have signed a screen option with a Ballina production company, who are now looking to co-produce it with American producers and create a series that will resonate with viewers in both countries,” she said.

“I think my fourteen-year-old self would be delirious with excitement.”