Read From High School Teaching to Writing the First Screenwriting Bible: Marguerite Bertsch
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On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
Though she never wrote a horror film, to celebrate Halloween this month’s focus is screenwriter, poet, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Zoe Akins, born on October 30, 1886. In 1935 Akins would become the third woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the highest honor for a Broadway play in the United States, after Zona Gale (1921) and Susan Glaspell (1931). Akins’ win came from her dramatization of Edith Wharton’s The Old Maid. Four years later the play was adapted by Casey Robinson into a film starring Bette Davis, even though Akins had begun adapting plays and turning out her own screenplays in the early 1930s. Throughout her career, she collaborated with some of the most important women both behind and in front of the cameras which has kept her work in the public eye.
Read Before Peanuts, Alice Guy Blaché Presented the First True Meaning of Christmas Film
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Though she never wrote a horror film, to celebrate Halloween this month’s focus is screenwriter, poet, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Zoe Akins, born on October 30, 1886. In 1935 Akins would become the third woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the highest honor for a Broadway play in the United States, after Zona Gale (1921) and Susan Glaspell (1931). Akins’ win came from her dramatization of Edith Wharton’s The Old Maid. Four years later the play was adapted by Casey Robinson into a film starring Bette Davis, even though Akins had begun adapting plays and turning out her own screenplays in the early 1930s. Throughout her career, she collaborated with some of the most important women both behind and in front of the cameras which has kept her work in the public eye.
Read From Silents to Talkies to TV Lenore J. Coffee Did It All
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Though she never wrote a horror film, to celebrate Halloween this month’s focus is screenwriter, poet, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Zoe Akins, born on October 30, 1886. In 1935 Akins would become the third woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the highest honor for a Broadway play in the United States, after Zona Gale (1921) and Susan Glaspell (1931). Akins’ win came from her dramatization of Edith Wharton’s The Old Maid. Four years later the play was adapted by Casey Robinson into a film starring Bette Davis, even though Akins had begun adapting plays and turning out her own screenplays in the early 1930s. Throughout her career, she collaborated with some of the most important women both behind and in front of the cameras which has kept her work in the public eye.
Read Poems, Plays, Pulitzers: Screenwriter Zoe Akins Did it All
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While it was a pleasure to host the Screenwriting Research Network’s 2023 conference last week. I love reconnecting with all the folks we see annually in such wonderful places in the world (from Leeds to London to Dunedin to Milan). But the other great thing about this event was the chance to share the Stephens College campus in Columbia, Missouri with everyone. This article in the Columbia Tribune covered the conference’s opening night reception and interviewed some of our international guests so it gives you a lovely feel of who was there and why we gather annually:
Screenwriters and academics converge on Stephens College for international conference
Screenwriters and screenwriting academics are gathering at Stephens College through Saturday for the Screenwriting Research Network Conference with the theme Gender and the Female Gaze.
A reception for conference participants was Wednesday night in the penthouse of the college library.
Participants are from at least 15 countries, said Roseanne Welch, executive director the Stephens’ Master of Fine Arts in TV and Screenwriting. Stephens College is a private women’s college in Columbia.
The female gaze refers to seeing life through women’s eyes, Welch said.
“We’re seeing that happen in all kinds of recent films, not just ‘Barbie'” Welch said.
Women’s stories were more complicated in the films of the 1930s and 1940s, she said.
“There were these complete stories with women anti-heroes,” Welch said.
If you love seeing dinosaurs come to life on screen and you think they first appeared on screen in Jurassic Park, think again. In 1926 renowned screenwriter-director Marion Fairfax adapted Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Lost World to the screen complete with the most advanced special effects of the time. It was an amazing feat for a filmmaker born in Richmond, Virginia, just ten years after the Civil War (October 24, 1875). While screenwriter Marion Fairfax lived into her 9th decade, seeing the administration of a second President Johnson, she only worked in Hollywood from the eras of Woodrow Wilson through Calvin Coolidge (1915-1926) despite being a powerhouse writer-director of her day.
Read Marion Fairfax Put Dinosaurs on Film Before Spielberg or Crichton Were Born
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