LOS ANGELES — Four individuals and one writing team have been selected as winners of the 2017 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition. The fellows will each receive a $35,000 prize, the first installment of which will be distributed at the Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Awards Presentation & Live Read on Thursday, November 2nd, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. For the fifth consecutive year, an ensemble of actors will be reading selected scenes from the winning scripts.
The 2017 winners are (listed alphabetically by author):
Vigil Chime, “Bring Back Girl”
SJ Inwards, “Jellyfish Summer”
Max Lance and Jen Bailey, “The Queen of Sleaze”
KG Rockmaker, “Last Days of Winter”
Cesar Vitale, “The Great Nothing”
A total of 7,102 scripts were submitted for this year’s competition. Nine individual screenwriters and one writing team were selected as finalists. Their scripts were then read and judged by the Academy Nicholl Fellowships Committee, who ultimately voted the winners.
The 2017 finalists are (listed alphabetically by author):
Donn Kennedy, “Roll the Bones”
Lillian Wang, “P.O. Box 1142”
Sharon Walker, “The Cutting Season”
Michael A. Wright, “Still Life”
Chris Ryan Yeazel, “The Savage”
Fellowships are awarded with the understanding that the recipients will each complete a feature-length screenplay during their fellowship year. The Academy acquires no rights to the works of Nicholl fellows and does not involve itself commercially in any way with their completed scripts.
The Academy Nicholl Fellowships Committee is chaired by writer Robin Swicord. The members of the committee are writers Tina Gordon Chism, Larry Karaszewski, Dan Petrie Jr., Eric Roth, Misan Sagay, Kirsten Smith and Tyger Williams; animation director Jennifer Yuh Nelson; cinematographer Steven Poster; executives Marcus Hu and Bill Mechanic; producers Stephanie Allain, Albert Berger, Julia Chasman, Julie Lynn and Robert W. Shapiro; and sound Bobbi Banks.
The global competition, which aims to identify and encourage talented new screenwriters, has awarded 152 fellowships since it began in 1986.