2016 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Shortlist

Winners to be announced in late September

LOS ANGELES, CA – Eleven individual screenwriters and one writing team have been shortlisted for the 2016 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting.  The Academy Nicholl Fellowships Committee will meet later this month to select up to five winners to receive year-long fellowships.  A total of 6,915 scripts were submitted for this year’s competition.

The shortlisted writers are (listed alphabetically):

Michele Atkins, “Talking About the Sky” (Seattle, WA)
Josh Barkey, “Marlene the Divine” (Waxhaw, NC)
Beanie Barnes, “Little Toro” (New York, NY)
Todd Condie, “John Wayne Slept Here” (Brooklyn, NY)
Spencer Harvey and Lloyd Harvey, “Photo Booth” (Balgowlah, Australia)
Geeta Malik, “Dinner with Friends” (Los Angeles, CA)
Danielle Ownbey, “The Blast-Off Inn” (Glendale, CA)
Elizabeth Oyebode, “Tween the Ropes” (Sunnyvale, CA)
Justin Piasecki, “Death of an Ortolan” (Los Angeles, CA)
Michael Toner, “Hey Jude” (Van Nuys, CA)
Arun K. Vir, “Suburban Turban” (Los Angeles, CA)
Kirk Weddell, “Alone” (Wimbledon, England)

The Academy Nicholl Fellowships Committee is chaired by writer Robin Swicord, and marketing executive Buffy Shutt serves as vice chair.  The other members of the committee are writers Tina Gordon Chism, Naomi Foner, Eric Roth, Kirsten Smith and Tyger Williams; actor Eva Marie Saint; animation director Jennifer Yuh Nelson; cinematographer John Bailey; executives Marcus Hu and Bill Mechanic; producers Stephanie Allain, Albert Berger, Julia Chasman, Julie Lynn, Peter Samuelson and Robert W. Shapiro.

The fellowship winners will each receive a $35,000 prize, the first installment of which will be distributed at an awards presentation on Thursday, November 3, at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.  For the fourth consecutive year, the event also will include a live read of selected scenes from the fellows’ winning scripts.

Established in 1986, the Academy created the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition to identify and encourage talented new screenwriters from around the world.  Since the program’s creation, the Academy has awarded 147 fellowships.  For more information on the Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, click here.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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