Academy Names Winners of $35,000 Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowships

Scenes from the winning screenplays will be read by a group of actors in a virtual event on Dec. 3

Academy logo
AMPAS

Five screenwriters have been given $35,000 prizes as winners of the 2020 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, the Academy announced on Wednesday. The five winners are James Acker for the screenplay “SadBoi,” Beth Curry for “Lemon,” Vanar Jaddou for “Goodbye, Iraq,” Kate Marks for “The Cow of Queens” and Jane Therese for “Sins of My Father.” They were chosen by the Academy Nicholl Fellowships Committee from the 7,831 scripts submitted to the Academy. The Nicholl Fellowships have been presented by the Academy since 1986 to aspiring screenwriters. Past winners include Nikole Beckwith (“Stockholm, Pennsylvania,” “Togetherish”), Alfred Botello (“Space Jam: A New Legacy”), Michael Werwie (“Lost Girls”) and Terri Miller and Andrew Marlowe (“The Equalizer”). In addition to the $35,000 cash prizes, which are intended to allow the recipients to complete a feature-length screenplay during their fellowship year, scenes from the winning scripts will be read by an ensemble of actors at a virtual event on Dec. 2. Finalists who did not win were Kris A. Holmes for “The Seeds of Truth,” Fred Martenson for “Demons in America,” Robin Rose Singer for “The Lions of Mesopotamia,” David Harrison Turner for “Safe Haven” and Andrew Wankier for “Three Heavens.” Short Films and Feature Animation Branch governor Jennifer Yuh Nelson serves as chair of the Academy Nicholl Fellowships Committee. Other members are John Bailey and Steven Poster from the Cinematographers Branch; William Mechanic from the Executives Branch; Julie Lynn, Peter Samuelson and Robert W. Shapiro from the Producers Branch; Bobbi Banks from the Sound Branch; Eric Heisserer, Larry Karaszewski, Dan Petrie Jr., Misan Sagay, Dana Stevens and Tyger Williams from the Writers Branch; and Members-at-Large James Plannette and Stephen Ujlaki.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.