On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
What is the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting? Here is a short introduction.
We’re pleased to present a new slideshow designed by graphic artist Phoenix Bussey, a Stephens College undergrad, using photos taken by MFA candidates during the last few years of workshops. We think it tells our story well. Write. Reach. Represent.
Visit the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting web site to apply today!
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Dawn Comer Jefferson is an Emmy-nominated, award-winning writer. On television, Comer Jefferson wrote on the CBS family drama Judging Amy, served as writer/consulting producer on MTV’s teen drama, South of Nowhere, freelanced on the CBS hit NCIS, and developed a drama pilot at NBC Universal Studios. She was nominated for an Emmy for writing the Fox-animated family film, Our Friend, Martin, and for the last nine years has written Emmy-winning arts programming for PBS, performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
As a non-fiction writer, Comer Jefferson has written about children, families and public policy issues for national print and online media including Garnet News, Working Mother, Fit Pregnancy Magazine and MomsRising, and her essays have been featured in the anthologies A Woman Alone (Seal Press) and Go Girl (Eighth Mountain Press). She adapted, produced and directed the eight-part NPR radio series adaptation of the biography Maggie’s American Dream, co-wrote the nonfiction book Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work, and Family, and the African American historical children’s fiction, The Promise. Visit her website.
“My first piece of advice is to recognize that you are a writer and a storyteller. A lot of people are hesitant to own that yet you really need to be in that mind space. And then remember that your first draft is not your only draft. There are probably 15 or 16 more and you’re not really done until your done… and even then, you’re not done.“
-Dawn Comer Jefferson
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Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.
With the perspiring assistance of Thomas Mitchell, who acts like a steam locomotive, the Spewacks have tossed another one of those melodramatic lampoons at the newspaper profession in “Clear All Wires,” put on at the Times Square last evening. It is brisk, noisy, extravagant and funny in “The Front Page” and “Broadway” tradition.
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Click To Register For The Conference
Online Open House with
Program Executive Director Dr. Rosanne Welch
and Director of Admissions Sally Bohlinger
Stephens College Low Residency M.F.A in TV and Screenwriting
Learn more about this ground-breaking program focused on bringing more female and underrepresented voices into the mainstream media. The MFA boasts an impressive record of success and some of the best faculty and mentors in the industry.
RSVP for Conference Links to gradmissions@stephens.edu
Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.
When Your Urge’s Mauve, [go to] the Cafe Intemational on Sunset Boulevard. The location offered supper, drinks, and the ability to watch boy-girls who necked and sulked and little girl customers who … look like boys.
The 1940 guidebook How to Sin in Hollywood offered tourists this description of a commercial establishment that they could see when they visited the Holly-wood area. On the opposite page, a cartoon featured two women in tuxedos above the caption “the little girl customers.”‘ One smoked a cigar and both wore prominent lipstick The description and cartoon presented images of women in the Los Angeles area who defied the culture’s gender and sexual norms.
Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!
†
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
Help Support Local Bookstores — Buy at Bookshop.org
* 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
Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.
From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 21: The Progressive Silent Film List
The Progressive Silent Film List is a growing online collection of information on more than 23,400 silent and sound films produced from 1888 through the end of 1929. Selected silent films produced in other countries after 1929 are also listed.
The Progressive Silent Film List listings are accessed through the filmographies and indexes provided below, or you may use Google to SEARCH the entire Silent Era website, including the PSFL listings.
Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!
†
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
Help Support Local Bookstores — Buy at Bookshop.org
* 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
The Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting is proud to help sponsor the 10th Annual Athena Film Festival, celebrating films that tell the extraordinary stories of fierce and fearless women leaders.
As part of our sponsorship, we hosted this MasterClass on television writing with one of our valued mentors – Valerie Woods, most recently co-executive producer of Queen Sugar, interviewed at the festival by our writer-in-residence, Ken Lazebnik.
Learn more about television writing and storytelling with a female focus in our low residency MFA program — rolling applications means there is still time for you to join our Fall 2020 cohort and learn from working writers like Valerie.
Visit the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting for more information.
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Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.
Challenging conventional scholarship placing the origins of film noir in postwar Hollywood, Sheri Chinen Biesen finds the genre’s roots firmly planted in the political, social, and material conditions of Hollywood during the war. After Pearl Harbor, America and Hollywood experienced a sharp cultural transformation that made horror, shock, and violence not only palatable but preferable. Hard times necessitated cheaper sets, fewer lights, and fresh talent; censors as well as the movie-going public showed a new tolerance for sex and violence; and female producers experienced newfound prominence in the industry.
Biesen brings prodigious archival research, accessible prose, and imaginative insights to both well-known films noir of the wartime period―The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and Double Indemnity―and others often overlooked or underrated―Scarlet Street, Ministry of Fear, Phantom Lady, and Stranger on the Third Floor.
Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!
†
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
Help Support Local Bookstores — Buy at Bookshop.org
* 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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Deborah Starr Seibel is a multiple award-winning journalist and screenwriter. For the past eight years, she has been an instructor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in the John Wells Division of Writing for Film & Television. In addition, she serves as a mentor for Stephens College’s MFA in Screenwriting program. In prime time television, Deborah recently sold two pilots to CBS and is credited with four years on staff. During those years, she wrote six episodes for the final season of NBC’s Sisters and spent three additional years on the staff of Promised Land, the spin-off to CBS’s Touched By An Angel. She has also written episodes for Mysterious Ways and 21 Jump Street.
As a television reporter, Deborah won a George Foster Peabody award for investigative journalism, two Emmy Awards and First Place from the Associated Press for one of her documentaries. As a print journalist, she has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Parade and USA Today. In addition, she is a long-time national correspondent for TV Guide.
In 2010, Deborah was awarded a USC Annenberg Fellowship to receive her Master’s Degree in Specialized Journalism/The Arts.
“If there isn’t a kernel of truth you shouldn’t be writing. You get to know the people in a writers’ room better than your family, because you have to bring yourself, your stories, your history, your family experience into that room or you have nothing to contribute because nobody on this planet has lived the life you’ve lived and if you don’t bring that into the writers’ room, what good are you? What we are as artists are people who are trying to allow other people to feel that they are not alone.”” Deborah Starr Seibel
Presented by Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting
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Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting alum Sahar Jahani recently sat for an interview with Voyage LA magazine. Check it out and join our fall 2020 cohort to put yourself on the road to your screenwriting future.
Write. Reach. Represent.
Today we’d like to introduce you to Sahar Jahani.
Sahar, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I am first generation Iranian-American and come from a Muslim family, so it took me a while to realize that this career was even a possibility. If you can’t see it, it’s hard to believe you can also do it. By that, I mean that I didn’t know any other Muslims or Iranians who worked in Hollywood even though I grew up twenty minutes from all the studios. I remember driving by the Disney Animation building on the 134 freeway on my way to school every day and just think it was the coolest place in the world. But for me, it felt unattainable.
Ten years later, I’m having meetings there all the time. I was always interested in storytelling from a young age. My sister and I would put on plays for my family and I developed an interest in photography in high school, but I never considered film as a career until I was in college. I had planned to become a journalist because that was the closest thing to film that I could consider a tangible career. But when I started school at UC Irvine and began interning at different newspapers, I realized how much journalism was changing in an era of digital media.
Read the entire article – Meet Sahar Jahani
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