• 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 Screenplay for Cosi
• 1999 — Nominated for Green Room Award Best New Australian Play for Language of the Gods
• 2000 — Nominated for New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards for The Twelfth of Never
• 2000 — Courier-Mail Book of The Year for The Twelfth of Never
• 2009 — Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award for Ice.

Plays

• Kiss The One-Eyed Priest (1973)
• Inner Voices (Currency Press, 1974)
• Death Of Joe Orton (1974)
• The Lady Of The Camellias (1979)
• Visions (Currency Press, 1979)
• Beauty And The Beast (1980)
• Cyrano De Bergerac (1980)
• Inside The Island (Currency Press, 1981)
• The Precious Woman (Currency Press, 1981)
• Lulu (1981)
• The Prince Of Homburg (1982)
• Radiance
• Royal Show (1982)
• Spellbound (1982)
• Sunrise (Currency Press, 1983)
• Albert Names Edward (Currency Press, 1983)
• The Golden Age (Currency Press, 1985)

• Beatrice
• The Song Room (Editions Rodopi, 1987)
• Capricornia (Currency Press, 1988)
• Byzantine Flowers (1989)
• Summer of the Aliens (Currency Press, 1992)
• Così (Currency Press, 1992)
• Crow
• Incorruptible (Currency Press, 1995)
• Jungle (1995)
• Language of the Gods (Currency Press, 1999)
• Miss Bosnia
• The Temple
• Watchtower
• Devil Is A Woman (2004)
• Page 8 (2006)

Non-fiction writing

• The Cheated (Angus & Robertson, Australia, 1979)
• Warne's World (Duffy & Snellgrove, Australia, 2002)
• Bad Dreaming (Pluto Press, Australia 2007)

Novels

• The Misery of Beauty (Angus & Robertson, Australia, 1976)
• Palu (Picador, Australia, 1987)
• Red Nights (Picador, Australia, 1997)
• Abaza (Picador, Australia, 2001)
• Ice (Allen & Unwin, 2008)

Memoirs

• The Twelfth of Never (Picador, Australia, 1999) ISBN 978-0-330-36187-3
• Shooting the Moon (Picador, Australia, 2004) ISBN 978-0-330-36490-4

Screen writing

• Displaced Persons (1984)
• Hunger (1986)
• "The Last Resort" (TV Series. 1988)
• Map of the Human Heart (1992)
• Heaven's Burning (1997)
• Radiance (associate producer/writer, 1998)
• Twisted Tales Directly From My Heart to You (1996)
• The Matchmaker (screen play, 1997)
• Così (screen play, 1997)
• The Widowmaker (2002)
• Black and White (2002)
• Rain of the Children (additional dialogue, 2008)

Libretti

• Inner Voices Victorian State Opera, 1978
• Whitsunday Opera Australia, 1988
• Love Burns Seymour Group, 1992 Adelaide Festival of Arts
• On the Beach Victorian Arts Centre Rio Tinto Grant 2000

Essays

• , The Monthly, December 2009 - January 2010, pp.44-52.
• ,The Monthly, February 2010, pp.22-29
• , The Monthly, March 2010, pp.40-46.