Announcments – Page 15 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Dr. Rosanne Welch Presents A Screenwriting Master Class – Thursday 4 April, 2019 – Oxford Brookes University

I’m off to the UK once more to spend a week teaching Screenwriting to the students of Oxford Brookes University. This is part of an exchange program between Oxford Brookes University and the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting.

Paolo Russo, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, has twice spent a week as a guest lecturer here in Los Angeles and now I get a chance to spend a week with his students. This Master Class is just one part of my activities there. I’ll be working closely with his screenwriting students individually and also get a chance to visit some important research locations like the Bodleian Library.

A Master Class With Hollywood Writer-Producer – Thursday 4 April, 2019 – Oxford Brookes College

The focus of Rosanne’s master class will be American television, but her insights will be useful for anyone interested in breaking into the industry either side of the pond. Rosanne will talk for about one hour + a 30-minute Q&A.

ROSANNE WELCH has written/produced for television (“Touched by an Angel”, “Picket Fences”, “Beverly Hills 90210”), teaches on the MFA Writing for Television at Stephens College and at California State University-Fullerton in Los Angeles. She serves as editor for the Journal of Screenwriting and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Written By, the magazine of the Writers Guild of America. Her most recent publication is “When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry” (MacFarland, 2018).

Attendance to this master class is mandatory for my Screenwriting students, but everyone else is welcome until we fill up the room.

Dr. Rosanne Welch’s Essay, “Hey, Hey, They Wrote The Monkees”, Included In Paperback L.A. Book 3!

The lovely thing about putting writing out into the world is that sometimes you receive calls or emails from editors who stumbled upon your work and want to reprint it in their own anthologies.

Such a lovely experience happened to me recently when Susan La Tempa, editor of Paperback LA – a series of 3 anthology collections of writings about Los Angeles across the decades, contacted me. She had read my article on the wild and crazy careers of the former writers of The Monkees and wanted to add it to her 3rd collection.

Happily, I received my contributor copy in the mail today and it looks great. The fact that my name appears in a Table of Contents along with great California writers like Casey Williams, Lisa See, Harry Shearer and Jonathon Gold (the only Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer) is… amazing to me.

Can’t wait for the publication launch party, signing and reception Sunday May 5, 2019 (4-6 p.m) at the Helms Design Center. Free and open to the public!

Hope to see you there!

Secrets. Sigalerts. Ravines. Records.

In Paperback L.A., A Casual Anthology Book 3, our contributors deftly command fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, magazine writing, memoir and other forms to conjure up visions of a Beverly Hills Wonderbread factory, the founding of the first sustained gay rights organization in the country, early 20th-century wagon-train settlers in Dodger Stadium area, a late 20th-century DTLA traffic tie-up that becomes a kind of symphony, a humorous 1940s novelty song whose refrain buoyed civil rights activists, the 1990s outrigger-team apprenticeship of a Tongva youth―and more. Plus, photo essays on “Motion and Stasis,” “Hometown Gold,” “The Right Notes,” and “Nowhere.”

Faculty Screenwriter and Author Gives Voice to Forgotten Women via California State University Fullerton News Center

Thanks to Karen Lindell for attending my library lecture on When Women Wrote Hollywood at the Pollak Library on the campus of California State University, Fullerton. Her article tries to make sense of the many subjects that have populated my books, and she rightly deduces that it is highlighting the work of women writers that is my main mission. Even in my book on The Monkees I made sure to fully cover the career of Treva Silverman, who by writing on that show became one of the first women to write for television without a male partner.

Video of “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Coming Soon!

Faculty Screenwriter and Author Gives Voice to Forgotten Women via CSUF News Center

As a young girl in Ohio, Rosanne Welch was a regular at her local library, pouring over autobiographies and memoirs of screenwriters from Hollywood’s early years. By the age of 10, she knew that she wanted to have a career in television or film.

Welch, lecturer in screenwriting at Cal State Fullerton, did make it to Hollywood, where she wrote for television shows “Beverly Hills 90210,” “Picket Fences,” ABC’s “Nightline” and “Touched by an Angel.”

But a funny thing happened on the way to the studio … as Welch prepared for her career, she was surprised to find that the female screenwriters she had read about as a child weren’t mentioned in her screenwriting courses.

This piqued her curiosity. Upon researching the matter, she found several reasons why these women had been sidelined in history.

Read Faculty Screenwriter and Author Gives Voice to Forgotten Women via CSUF News Center

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* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Dr. Rosanne Welch receives her award at the 2019 Faculty & Staff Appreciation Night, Cal Poly Pomona [Video]

Dr. Rosanne Welch receives her award at the Cal Poly Pomona 2019 Faculty and Staff Appreciation Night during the Women Bronco’s Game in Kellog Arena.

Rosanne was nominated for the award by Rebecca Islas. player on the Women’s Broncos Basketball Team who said…

“Her great energy and always being positive coming into class in a great mood. Always so eager to teach. Pushing me out of my comfort zone.

This was the first time she taught a course like this and she did a great job at it. I liked her very much as a person. She is caring and very understanding.”

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Rosanne is mentioned in “Titan Voice: My screenwriting realization steals the scene” – Orange County Register

You never know how much of an effect – if any – you’re having on students who are sometimes quiet in class, or looking at their computer screens when you think they ought to be looking at you… but this article was a wonderful reminder that they are listening, sometimes even amidst their multi-tasking lives. And what this MFA student took away didn’t come from any long lectures, really, but rather from the opening of all my classes where I bring in articles from recent newspaper stories about the film and television business and discuss what they mean to them and their futures. In this case, it had to do with which gendered writers are usually chosen for which genre films…a topic of deep interest to me – and through this article she published, I learned it was a topic of deep interest to Chelsea as well.

“Titan Voice: My screenwriting realization steals the scene” by Chelsea Barns

[…]

I can only lend my stream of consciousness to the screenwriting instructors I have had the pleasure to learn from in the MFA program. Specifically, when it comes to this filmmaker Michael Bay-type realization, I had to give the credit to lecturer Rosanne Welch. This woman has taught me more about what it is to be a female writer in Hollywood than I ever thought I needed to know. I would never have made this connection with the tone and the story of this film had it not been for her classes.

She has taught me that as a woman I need to speak up. I have to raise my voice, and in the way that I know how; writing. Going into this program I did not imagine I would grow as much as I have. Thank you to all my classmates and our faculty that push me every day to be better. I will miss learning from all of you when this wild ride of a program is over.

[…]

Read the entire column: Titan Voice: My screenwriting realization steals the scene“

Event: “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Rosanne Welch, Ph.D, Pollack Library, Cal State Fullerton, March 5, 2019, Noon

When Women Wrote Hollywood

Tuesday, March 5, 2019 (12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.) in PLS-360 (Pollack Library)
Rosanne Welch, Ph.D., Instructor and Editor of
“When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry”
Department of Cinema and Television Arts
College of Communications

This time I’ll discuss the women in my new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars – but fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.

Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood

or Buy the Book on Amazon

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Celebrate International Day of Women and Girls in Science – 11 February 2019

Celebrate International Day of Women and Girls in Science (un.org) by learning more about these amazing Women Scientists and Inventors and Many More in my books. Check your local library or bookstore today!

Maria Mitchell [pronounced “mə-RYE-ə”] (August 1, 1818 – June 28, 1889) was an American astronomer, who in 1847 by using a telescope, discovered a comet, which as a result became known as “Miss Mitchell’s Comet.”^[1] She won a gold medal prize for her discovery, which was presented to her by King Frederick VI of Denmark. On the medal was inscribed “Non Frustra Signorum Obitus Speculamur et Ortus” in Latin (taken from Georgics by Virgil (Book I, line 257)^[2] (English: “Not in vain do we watch the setting and rising [of the stars]”).^[3] Mitchell was the first American woman to work as a professional astronomer.^[4]^{[5] –}– Wikipedia

* That’s Maria you see center stage on the cover of Technical Innovation in American History above!

Bette Nesmith Graham (March 23, 1924 – May 12, 1980) was an American typist, commercial artist, and the inventor of Liquid Paper. She was the mother of musician and producer Michael Nesmith of The Monkees.^[1]– Wikipedia

* I researched Bette for Technical Innovation in American History as well as Why The Monkees Matter, talking about her famous musician sone, Michael

Mae Carol Jemison (born October 17, 1956) is an American engineer, physician and NASA astronaut. She became the first African American woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992. After medical school and a brief general practice, Jemison served in the Peace Corps from 1985 until 1987, when she was selected by NASA to join the astronaut corps. She resigned from NASA in 1993 to found a company researching the application of technology to daily life. She has appeared on television several times, including as an actress in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She is a dancer and holds nine honorary doctorates in science, engineering, letters, and the humanities. She is the current principal of the 100 Year Starship organization. – Wikipeda

* Mae appears in both Women in American History and Technical Innovation in American History

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* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Our Latest Encyclopedia, Technical Innovation in American History, Now Available for Pre-Order — Arrives February 28, 2019

Pre-Order from Amazon | ABC-CLIO

TELL YOUR LIBRARIANS!

Download this printable flyer

Technical Innovation in American History — the latest encyclopedia edited by Peg Lamphier and I — is now available for pre-order!

It was a project we took over from another editor and we were shocked to find at that stage it did not include ANY women or domestic technologies. Just a lot of odd stuff about different kinds of bridges. So we jumped at the chance to give it more women and people of color.

THEN we had to battle a bit because 3 cover photos had already been chosen – none of them with a woman in them. We argued for female representation and (after we won the first award on our first set of encyclopedias) eventually the publishers agreed to the photo we chose of Maria Mitchell, America’s first great Astronomer.

Representation matters. Who tells your history matters.

More of my books from ABC-CLIO

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* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

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New Review of “America’s Forgotten Founding Father: A Novel Based on the Life of Filippo Mazzei” from the Historical Novel Society

It’s so nice to see my book on Filippo Mazzei continuing to receive good reviews from the press. This one comes from website of the Historical Novel Society and seems to like being introduced to such an interesting man as Filippo.

The novel is more of a factual presentation than fictional storytelling; the chronology is interspersed with anecdotal conversations with Franklin, Jefferson, and others involved in the emerging American state. Readers learn about Mazzei’s involvement with the Virginia militia and his work advocating for independence from the British Crown in the Second Continental Congress, conducting business for the colonies in France, and writing essays supporting the American Revolution in the European press after he returns to his homeland.

Buy the book

They cap it off by telling their readers that…

“But the book has a larger focus than Mazzei’s place in the American Revolution. It covers his early years, travels in Turkey, and relationships with family as well as discussions of religion, the prerogatives of landed gentry versus the rights of ordinary people, even the proper pronunciation of Italian words.”

So glad they noticed that!

Read the entire review on the Historical Novel Society site

Rosanne appears on Cal Poly Pomona College of Education and Integrative Studies (CEIS) Podcast to discuss Interdisciplinary General Education (IGE) [Video] (30 Minutes)

The Dean of the College of Education and Integrative Studies (CEIS) at Cal Poly Pomona (Jeff Passe) asked me to invite 3 IGE (Interdisciplinary General Education) students ( Marie Armayin, Ileana Montes and Trejon Hollins) to a podcast about the courses I teach in the IGE and the particular pedagogy we practice (Don’t you just LOVE alliteration?).

Subscribe to the Podcast via iTunes | Soundcloud | Stitcher | TuneIn

That video is now available on YouTube and the Cal Poly Pomona CEIS Podcast Page. It’s a great way to capture the experience of some of my more expressive and interesting students in the middle of their educational journeys – and to demonstrate the idea of being able to articulate your values and ideas in public, a ‘soft skill’ we all can use for the rest of our lives. I often argue that these soft skills make the difference between acing a job interview (and later the career) and not because everyone who comes to an interview has a matching resume of accomplishment so it’s how they handle those soft skills that wins the race.

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