Magpie Pictures is thrilled and honoured to have been able to option Gillian Mears' brilliant and multi award winning novel Foal's Bread, to adapt it for the screen.

Foal’s Bread is set in hardscrabble farming country and around the country show high-jumping circuit that prevailed in rural New South Wales prior to the Second World War. Telling the story of two generations of the Nancarrow family and their fortunes, it is a love story of impossible beauty and sadness, framed against a world both tender and unspeakably hard.

Gillian Mears grew up in the northern NSW towns of Grafton and Lismore. Acclaim came early, with her short-story collections and novels winning major prizes. Her books include Ride a Cock Horse, and The Grass Sister, both shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1989, and 1996. The Mint Lawn won The Australian/Vogel Award.

Her most recent novel, Foal’s Bread, has a passionate following, and has won many awards including:

Winner, 2012 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction
Shortlisted, 2012 Miles Franklin Literary Award
Winner, 2012 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction
Winner, 2012 The Age Book of the Year Award Fiction
Winner, 2012 Colin Roderick Award
Shortlisted, 2013 NSW Premier's Literary Awards
Shortlisted, Indie Awards 2012, Fiction category
Winner, 2012 ALS Gold Medal
Shortlisted, 2012 WA Premier's Book Award

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