in 1973. Soon after abandoning his university degree, he got into his car one day and decided to drive north, as far away from his parents as possible, but without any clear destination. He reached the NSW coastal town of Nowra, when his car broke down. He had already decided to abandon his birth name, and chose Nowra because of this enforced stop. He worked in several jobs and lived an itinerant lifestyle until the mid-1970s, when his plays began to attract attention. Since this time he has lived in Sydney, mainly in Kings Cross. In late 1974 he married the composer Sarah de Jong; they co-wrote some of the music for his stage works. In 1976 they lived in Munich, Germany for six months. They divorced ten years later, after he had an affair with her best female friend. During his marriage to de Jong, he was resident playwright of the Sydney Theatre Company in 1979–1980, and Associate Director at Adelaide's Lighthouse Theatre in 1982–1983. He also appeared in the 1988 Australian film The Everlasting Secret Family as a shop assistant, his only film acting role. He engaged in a number of gay relationships for some time, before marrying his second wife, television presenter Gerri Williams, at the Soho Bar in Kings Cross, in early 1997. It was attended by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. He married his third and current wife, the author Mandy Sayer, in 2003. They had worked together when they co-edited the anthology In the Gutter ... Looking at the Stars in 2000. They have separate homes not far from each other, in which their daytime writing activities are conducted, and they come together in the evening. In February 2014 they were named joint holders of the 2014 Copyright Agency Non-Fiction Writer-in-Residence at the University of Technology, Sydney. Nowra's plays are studied in Veronica Kelly's work The Theatre of Louis Nowra. Awards 1990 – Prix Italia award, for the radio play Summer of the Aliens 1992 – Winner of the NSW Premier's Literary Prize for the play Cosi 1994 – Winner of Victoria Premier's, Louis Esson Prize for Drama for The Temple 1994 – Australian Literary Society Gold Medal for Radiance and The Temple 1994 – The Australia/Canada Award 1995 – Green Room Award for Best New Play 1996 – Honorary Doctorate – Griffith University, 1996 1996 – Australian Film Institute Award – Best Adapted