My Interviews with 39 Nicholl Fellowship Screenwriting Winners

2 min readApr 15, 2019

The Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition is the most important of all screenplay contests. Founded in 1986, it is administered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and previous winners have included Allison Anders, Susannah Grant, Ehren Kruger, Michael A. Rich, and many others who have gone on to careers in the film and television business.

Since 2012, I have made it a point to seek out each year’s Nicholl winners for interviews. Why? Two reasons. First, to analyze their winning script and creative process to see what we, as writers, can learn from them. Second, to get a snapshot of writers at the front end of their professional careers. While I definitely enjoy interviewing established writers, there is something unique about catching a writer as they transition from aspiring to working writer.

Here are links to interviews I have conducted with 36 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winners including all of them from 2012–2018:

2010

Destin Daniel Cretton

2012

Nikole Beckwith
Sean Robert Daniels
James DiLapo
Allan Durand
Michael Werwie

2013

Frank DeJohn & David Alton Hedges
Patty Jones
Alan Roth
Stephanie Shannon
Barbara Stepansky

2014

Sam Baron
Alisha Brophy & Scott Miles
Melissa Iqbal
Sallie West

2015

Elizabeth Chomko
Andrew Friedhof
Anthony Grieco
Sam Regnier
Amy Tofte

2016