On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch – Writing, Film, Television and More!

New Book: “Shaping Global Culture through Screen Writing: Women Who Write Our Worlds” Edited by Rose Farrell and Rosanne Welch – Available September 2025 [Books]

Shaping Global Culture through Screen Writing: Women Who Write Our Worlds by Rose Farrell and Rosanne Welch

Excited to announce that the book I co-edited with my Australian friend, and Screenwriting Research Network colleague, Rose Ferrell will be available in Sept. 2025. Shaping Global Cultures Through Screenwriting: Women Who Write Our Worlds is a collection of international writers focused on women and the power of their words to change their worlds.

You’ll learn about the importance of the female perspective in the animated Bluey, female rap artists in North-West Nigeria, the desire-driven filmmaking of Celine Sciamma, the queer utopias of Miranda July’s Kajillionaire, translating blindness and homelessness into video games, and the indigenous roots of Latin American women’s cinema – and so much more. We’re excited about spreading these stories and publishing many first time chapter authors.

I want to thank Rose Ferrell for taking this editing journey with me and doing most of the heavy-lifting. Watch out for more info on when the book is available for purchase – and remember asking your local or college library to order a copy is just as good as buying one yourself.

Dolores Huerta: A Life in American History by April Tellez, Edited by Dr. Rosanne Welch an Dr. Peg Lamphier [Books]

Series co-editor Peg Lamphier and I are proud to congratulate author April Tellez on the publication of her first book with our “Women Making History” series from Bloomsbury. Dolores Huerta: A Life in American History is now available from their website and can be ordered from any independent bookseller you frequent. It’s a great time to read about a woman who is “one of the great contributors to American history, labor history, women’s history, and the history of activism, social justice, and human rights. Here, her story is told in a way that captures the full span of her life and achievements.”

April’s background as a history professor at Mt. San Antonio College who specializes in Chicanx, Native American, Women’s histories and in cultural resistance to settler colonization made her the perfect author for this book. We thank her for all the time and dedication it took the research (during Covid) and can’t wait for new readers to learn more about Dolores Huerta and all she’s done for fairness and equality for workers. She deserves her own national holiday!

Dolores Huerta: A Life in American History by April Tellez, Edited by Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier

Buy Today at Bloomsbury Press | Bookshop.org | Amazon

A comprehensive exploration of Dolores Huerta’s contributions to U.S. labor history and her life’s work of advocating for systematically disadvantaged and marginalized groups.

An iconic figure in American civil rights and one of the most influential labor rights activists of the 20th century, Huerta overcame great odds to make enduring contributions to social justice and advocacy, particularly for farm workers and the Latino community. Organized chronologically, this volume offers the opportunity for readers to better understand Huerta’s life. From her early beginnings in California’s central valley, to her influential leadership on the United Farm Workers (UFW) union, to her work educating on women’s issues and advocating for Latino representation in politics, readers will explore the many efforts that made Huerta’s influence enduring. Beyond a biography, this book places Huerta center stage in the context of American history, looking closely at the Chicano civil rights movement in California; social restrictions, disenfranchisement, and various forms of segregation in 1950’s and 1960’s America; historical labor strikes and boycotts; key legislation and political figures active in labor rights, and more. Huerta is one of the great contributors to American history, labor history, women’s history, and the history of activism, social justice, and human rights. Here, her story is told in a way that captures the full span of her life and achievements.

Buy Today at Bloomsbury Press | Bookshop.org | Amazon

Meet Beulah Marie Dix: Award-Winning Scholar and Anti-War Novelist Turned Screenwriter – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, January 2025

Born on Christmas Day in 1876 in Massachusetts, Dix and her family lived in various cities around the historic state until she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to study English and History at Radcliffe College. There she became the first female to be granted the Sohier Literary Prize, for the best thesis of a Harvard or Radcliffe student. From there it seemed a quick move into the world of writing.

Dix began with books about her favorite subject – the history that surrounded her in Massachusetts. In 1899, at the age of 23, she published Soldier Rigdale: How He Sailed in the Mayflower and How He Served Miles Standish. Her first play, A Rose of Plymouth Town ran for a month in 1902, followed by The Road to Yesterday, which ran for 8 months in 1907. Altogether Dix wrote 18 books and 5 plays before moving into the new world of film.

Read Meet Beulah Marie Dix: Award-Winning Scholar and Anti-War Novelist Turned Screenwriter

Read about more women from early Hollywood

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Running Down the Rabbit Hole of Research, Dr. Rosanne Welch

Running Down the Rabbit Hole of Research

It’s always fun to fall into the rabbit hole of research. It always teaches me new things about other eras, along with reminding me that one of the ways women disappear in history. They change their names, making it harder and harder to find them. I was reminded of this as I was writing a column on novelist turned silent screenwriter Beaulah Marie Dix. In one of many short bits about her online, I found mention of daughter Evelyn Flebbe Scott on the very helpful Women Film Pioneers Project. There, I also found that Evelyn had herself become “an industry writer” and had written a Hollywood memoir, Hollywood When Silents Were Golden (Internet Archive) that can also be ordered from the Los Angeles Public Library.

An online search for Evelyn Scott led to a southern novelist – Evelyn Scott (born Elsie Dunn) – so not the Evelyn Scott I was researching. Luckily, I had my Evelyn Scott’s father’s name, so I added the Flebbe to the search, and that’s when Evelyn Flebbe Scott came up on Goodreads as the author of 2 children’s books + the aforementioned memoir. It also gave the next tidbit, giving me her father’s profession: “was the daughter of screenwriter/author Beulah Marie Dix and book importer Georg Heinrich Flebbe” along with the explanation of where ‘Scott’ came from: “She married film editor David Scott in 1935” AND, the confirmation that “Evelyn F. Scott worked for decades in Hollywood as a story editor at MGM.”

Then, in looking up a tiny smidgen of a clue on IMDB – that she had a play that “the Technicolor Corporation to be adapted as one of their Great Events short color film series” I searched the play’s title Allison’s Lad in IBDB, the Internet Broadway Database – it wasn’t listed. So I broadened to a larger search and found it listed on a new fun site: The Unknown Playwrights site “Where unknown playwrights become known”.

There I learned that “Dix had a thing for history and wars” and the one-act “is set during the bloodletting known as The English Civil War” and “appears in a volume of one-acts set entirely during wartime.” Their Link Heaven took me to the Internet Archive where a printed copy of the play had been scanned.

Now I need to read some books on the MGM scenario department to see if Evelyn worked with Kate Corbaley, the famous head of the story department at MGM in the 1930s, who you can read more about here – How Kate Corbaley, Powerful Reader at MGM in the 1930s, Paved the Way for Today’s Hollywood Literary Scouts.

That’s a tiny example of the rabbit hole of research one can hop into and like Alice in Wonderland, find oneself racing through all sorts of interesting eras and fascinating lives.

I Read A New Christmas Gift

Find more of my photos on Instagram | PixelFed

Book: Didion and Babitz

More from my Instagram Feed

Writer, Producer, Agent and Mentor (And Mom to the DeMille Boys) – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, December 2024

The surname DeMille (or de Mille) brings up thoughts of the famous line from Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler’s Sunset Boulevard “Mr. de Mille, I’m ready for my close up” which references silent screen director Cecil. Perhaps people remember his brother, William, who started as a playwright and became a Hollywood director and joined 3rd wife Clara Beranger in founding the film school at the University of Southern California. And sometimes the surname conjures of memories of Tony Award-winning choreographer Agnes de Mille (daughter of William/granddaughter of Beatrice). From now on it should bring up the writer, producer and mentor who worked frequently in both Broadway and Hollywood – Beatrice DeMille. (From here on out we will call her Beatrice to avoid confusion).

Read Writer, Producer, Agent, and Mentor (And Mom to the DeMille Boys)

Read about more women from early Hollywood

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

From Silent Murder Mysteries to Andy Hardy’s Americana, Agnes Christine Johnston Wrote it All – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, November 2024

Read From Silent Murder Mysteries to Andy Hardy’s Americana, Agnes Christine Johnston Wrote it All

Read about more women from early Hollywood

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Save 35% on McFarland Books – One of My Publishers is offering a 35% Discount on Their Catalog This Week!

Save 35% on McFarland Books – One of My Publishers is offering a 35% Discount on Their Catalog This Week!

Along with your other holiday shopping over this Thanksgiving weekend, I’m happy to pass along this lovely discount from McFarland Publishing, the fine folks who published two of my favorite books:

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

AND

When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry

Direct from the McFarland site, From now through December 2, they are offering a full 35% off ALL of their titles with coupon code HOLIDAY24 at checkout.

See the entire McFarland Catalog

You can buy one of my books — or any other cool pop culture book you find — for yourself or anyone else on your gift list this year.

Happy Holidays!

Rosanne speaks as part of Art for Healing and Renewal, Part ar the Jacksonville Museum of Science and History, November 21, 2024, 6pm

On November 21st I’ll be in Jacksonville, Florida on a panel at the MOSH (Museum of Science and History) to discuss a chapter I wrote in the upcoming book Stories Of The Holocaust: Art for Healing and Renewal, edited by Dr. Karen Berman and Dr. Gail Humphries.

I was honored when Dr. Humphries invited me to write the opening reflection to a section in Vol. 2: On Screen and in the Gallery. Then, being me, I asked if they had a chapter on screenwriters Frances and Albert Hackett who adapted The Diary of Anne Frank from book to Pulitzer-Prize-winning Broadway play and then into the film. The editors hadn’t planned such a chapter but it sounded valuable to the collection so they commissioned me to write it. Now I’ll have the chance to tell even more people about the brilliant work of this married team of screenwriters who also gave film fans The Thin Man, Father of the Bride, Easter Parade, and It’s a Wonderful Life.

Joining Dr. Humphries:

Elizabeth Gelman, Senior Director of Arts and Cultural Programming for Creative Pinellas, previous director of The Florida Holocaust Museum (Pinellas County, Florida)

Ruth Gordon, Former social studies teacher in Miami-Dade County and founder/current advisor for Holocaust Impact Theater (Miami, Florida)

Dr. Laurence Sherr, Award-winning composer of international stature, concert producer, and professor of music, Kennesaw State University (Kennesaw, Georgia)

Dr. Rosanne Welch, Executive Director of Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Program, author and screenwriter (Los Angeles, California); also author for Reflection

Link on MOSH Site

My new book chapter in The Works of Shonda Rhimes from Bloomsbury [Book]

Order from Bloomsbury | Amazon | Bookshop.org

I’m very proud to have a chapter in this new inaugural book in the Screen Storytellers collection covering The Works of Shonda Rhimes. Edited by Anna Weinstein, an Assistant Professor of Screenwriting at Kennesaw State University, the series is designed to do one of my favorite things – bust the outdated ‘auteur’ theory by bringing attention to the writers of the stories we have loved and watched – and rewatched – all our lives.

For this collection, my chapter focuses on how Rhimes’ shows come from the Humanism ideology even moreso than simply a feminist one, though that is what many people think. But Rhimes’ hired Dan Shapiro, chair of the College of Medicine’s humanities department at Penn State Hershey, as a consultant for her first two medical dramas Grey’s Anatomy (2005–) and Private Practice (2007–13). In this way, Rhimes was able to bring the real-world philosophy of medicine to her fictional hospitals, presenting authentic depictions of humanism to her audiences. One of the things I love about research is learning new things about people/shows/events I thought I already knew well.

The other exciting thing about this inaugural book arriving is that I have signed on to edit a similar book on The Works of Susan Harris so this book is my example of what that future project will feel like when it arrives in the mail!