Stowe Story Labs Announces Fellows and Honorable Mentions for 2023 Labs and Retreats
STOWE STORY LABS IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THE 2023 FELLOWS AND HONORABLE MENTIONS FOR THE BELLEM ENTERTAINMENT, FINAL DRAFT, FILM FATALES, LAW FIRM OF STACEY A. DAVIS, NYX HORROR COLLECTIVE, MAVEN SCREEN MEDIA, PAGE INTERNATIONAL SCREENWRITING AWARDS, SAGINDIE, SIDEWALK FILM FESTIVAL, STOWE DIVERSITY, STUDIO SKYFIRE, TANGERINE ENTERTAINMENT, AND UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT FELLOWSHIPS TO THE 2023 NARRATIVE LABS AND WRITERS RETREATS.
The selection process was difficult and competitive, and we are pleased to honor these artists and projects, and thank all who applied. Thank you as well to our fellowship partners who help make this possible.
Congratulations to all.
BELLEM ENTERTAINMENT FELLOW:
Robin Farmer — Mechanicsville, VA, USA — Imprinted // Drama Feature
Logline: An acclaimed actress puts her career on pause for adoptive motherhood only to learn the alarming truth behind her daughter's peculiar behavior.
Bio: Robin Farmer is a screenwriter, author and journalist. Malcolm and Me, her 2020 debut YA novel, was adapted from her own original screenplay. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Robin knew in third grade she wanted to write for a living. As a national award-winning journalist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, her investigative work and special projects earned her a Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan. A freelance writer since 2010, her clients include corporations and universities. Awards for her fiction projects include residencies at the Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. When not writing, Robin volunteers with organizations that empower writers. Director of the Virginia Screenwriters Forum, she is a member of the James Branch Cabell Library Associates Board and James River Writers. She lives with her husband in a suburb of Richmond, Virginia. She is working on a pilot and another novel.
BELLEM ENTERTAINMENT HONORABLE MENTION:
Gina DeAngelis — Williamsburg, VA, USA — The Knocking at the Marsh // Horror Thriller Feature
LAW FIRM OF STACEY A. DAVIS FELLOW:
Candace Egan — O Neals, CA, USA — Second Set // Comedy TV – ½ hour
Logline: After a recently divorced grandmother moves in with her parents, she is recruited to play tennis for a community college and must navigate the challenges of being a 55-year-old freshman student athlete.
Bio: Candace Egan is a screenwriter, semi-retired professor of Film and Media Arts at Fresno State and an avid tennis player. She was the first female news videographer at the TV station where she worked and later the first female video production professor at Fresno State. She’s had a long career as a non-fiction visual storyteller, exploring stories about a breadth of people such as the first Hmong women to go to college, an American WWII POW from a Nazi death camp, a Portuguese-American congressman, competitive wheelchair tennis players and a U.S. Poet Laureate. Her life and career lead her to write female-driven, inspirational dramas about mature, authentic women who transform into vibrant, adventurous versions of themselves. Her accolades include: a ScreenCraft TV Pilot semifinalist, CineStory Feature Retreat quarterfinalist, California Women’s Film Festival Finalist, and an Official Selection of the Toronto International Women Film Festival.
LAW FIRM OF STACEY A. DAVIS HONORABLE MENTION:
Leslie-Ann Coles — Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada — Soiled Dove // Western Feature
FINAL DRAFT FELLOW:
Jeremy Craig — Los Angeles, CA, USA — Run the Storm // Action Feature
Logline: Run the Storm tells the harrowing true story of the 2015 sinking of the container ship SS El Faro, one of the deadliest merchant marine disasters in modern history.
Bio: Jeremy is a WGA screenwriter based in Austin and Los Angeles. He has had several projects in development, most recently with Silver Pictures and Anonymous Content, and he has been the recipient of various writing distinctions, including multiple awards from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and a semi-finalist in the Academy Nicholl Fellowship. He received his MFA from Columbia University.
FINAL DRAFT HONORABLE MENTION:
Matthew Stewart — Los Angeles, CA, USA — Cointelpro // Historical Drama TV – 1 hour
FILM FATALES FELLOW:
StormMiguel Florez — San Francisco, CA, USA — Welcome To Roswell // Mockumentary Comedy Feature
Logline: A middle aged transgender filmmaker returns to his father’s conservative birthplace of Roswell, New Mexico to document coming out to his family; however, his partner’s obsession with the 1947 UFO crash takes him and his film crew in a very different direction.
Bio: StormMiguel Florez is a trans, queer Chicane filmmaker, whose work includes the award-winning documentaries The Whistle (2019, Producer/Director) and MAJOR! (2015, Editor/Co-Producer). StormMiguel is also an event producer, actor, and a life-long musician. He is a 2022 SFFILM/Rainin grant winner and a 2021 Sundance Trans Possibilities fellow, and most recently a Film Fatales Stowe Story Labs Fellow. His work has also been supported by The San Francisco Arts Commission, NALAC (National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures), Trans Justice Funding Project, and Horizons Foundation. His first acting role was at the tender age of ten in the made for TV movie, Police Woman Centerfold. He’s originally from Albuquerque, NM, which he very much considers to be his homeland, and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 25 years. He lives with his life partner and fellow filmmaker, Annalise Ophelian, and their 2 chihuahuas.
FILM FATALES HONORABLE MENTION:
Alex Bush — Los Angeles, CA, USA — Thaw // Romance, Suspense Drama Feature
MAVEN SCREEN MEDIA FELLOW:
Jolie Huang — New York, NY, USA — Rule of Law // Drama TV – 1 hour
Logline: An idealistic young Chinese-American lawyer must reevaluate her understanding of justice and morality while presiding over high-stakes cases as a law clerk for one of California's most powerful federal judges, all while juggling relationships with her fellow cutthroat law clerks and uneducated family.
Bio: Jolie Huang is a New York-based writer and lawyer hailing from the Midwest. After earning a Diploma in Culinary Arts from the International Culinary Center and a law degree from Stanford, she spent the next several years working in private practice and later, for the government. She is also a graduate of the professional TV Writing program at UCLA and her scripts have placed in several contests. Jolie's stories focus on multidimensional women of color in male-dominated industries, drawing from her own experiences and upbringing.
MAVEN SCREEN MEDIA HONORABLE MENTION:
Rebecca Louise Miller — Brooklyn, NY, USA — Catch & Release // Dark Comedy TV – ½ hour
NYX HORROR COLLECTIVE FELLOWS:
Mai and Kim Spurlock (The Spurlock Sisters) — Irvington, NY, USA — Good Sisters // Horror Feature
Logline: Linh Tran is a spiritual medium in Đạo Mẫu, an ancient Vietnamese religion. When she travels upstate to perform what she believes to be a routine blessing, Linh soon realizes a ravenous spirit is stalking her and her teenage daughter.
Bio: The Spurlock Sisters are a Vietnamese-Appalachian filmmaking duo whose films include BUỔI CHIỀU, a Vietnamese language ghost story that premiered at Slamdance before winning the Jury Prize at the Vietnamese International Film Festival, and the STUDENT ACADEMY AWARD-winning DOWN IN NUMBER 5, a Southern Gothic set in coal country. Described by critics as “exquisitely filmed and heart-wrenching,” DOWN IN NUMBER 5 won the King First Prize for Filmmaking at NYU, the Austin Film Festival, and many others. The Spurlocks have drawn support for their projects from The Sundance Institute, The Black List, Venice Biennale Cinema College, IFP, New York State Council on the Arts, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Cine Qua Non, and the Writer’s Lab.
NYX HORROR COLLECTIVE HONORABLE MENTION:
Shelley Gustavson — Oak Park, IL, USA — Muse // Supernatural Horror Feature
PAGE INTERNATIONAL SCREENWRITING AWARDS FELLOW:
Marlena Brown — Atlanta, GA, USA — True Falls // Mystery Drama TV – 1 hour
Logline: After the murder of True Falls' chief of police, Ada Long, a Black homicide detective, takes over her Southern hometown’s mostly white, all-male police force.
Bio: Marlena Brown is a writer and book publicist whose work has been featured in The New York Times. If she’s not daydreaming about new stories or watching horror flicks, she’s spoiling nieces and fur child.
PAGE INTERNATIONAL SCREENWRITING AWARDS HONORABLE MENTION:
Steve Smith — Thousand Oaks, CA, USA — Under Pressure // Drama Thriller Feature
SAGINDIE FELLOW:
Chaseedaw Giles — Los Angeles, CA, USA — The Final Cut // Drama Feature
Logline: In a West Baltimore neighborhood plagued with staggering gun homicide rates, the community's barber struggles with PTSD as he routinely cuts his young client's hair in life at the shop, and in untimely death at the funeral home.
Bio: Nearly six feet tall, Chaseedaw has never been able to fit into any box. The multi-hyphenate talent grew up in Roxbury, MA where she attended Boston Latin School. She lived in D.C. for seven years working in journalism, modeling, and performing live music and theater before moving to Los Angeles. Her latest songs “Prvt Prty” and “Fresh 2” are available on streaming platforms under artist name Cha Cha. Chaseedaw looks for ways to find beauty in adverse experiences. Being a childhood cancer survivor, in 2015 she produced a fashion show featuring cancer survivor models and in 2017, organized a photo gallery to showcase the beauty of scars. She aspires to write stories with the power to change hearts. The Final Cut is a 2022 Academy Nicholl Fellowship and Almanack Screenwriter October Colony semi-finalist. Chaseedaw is currently in pre-production for an original horror short. For more, visit www.chaseedaw.com.
SAGINDIE FELLOW:
Benjamin Mulholland — Oakland, CA, USA — The Lake Merritt Monster // SciFi Monster Adventure Feature
Logline: When Ollie Henderson’s mother is attacked by a monster hiding in the depths of Lake Merritt, he sets out on a mission to find her - discovering instead a hidden network of monster hunters tasked with protecting Oakland from its own dark underbelly.
Bio: Ben is an award-winning Oakland based writer and director, who has been turning small budgets into engaging motion pictures; most notably, The Lake Merritt Monster and the M.O.A.B series of shorts. His biting action-satire web series Pennies for the Juggernaut was distributed online both domestically and internationally, garnering fans in Europe, South Korea, Japan and Australia. Ben’s films seek to explore our collective secret mythologies, joys, politics and mysticisms. Ever delving deeper and expounding on his love affair with Sci-Fi, Shamanism and Taoism, while enjoying the fun and thrill that only movies can provide. He loves building worlds that transport the viewer from the archetypal world that they know to a mystifying adventure that will engage the heart and mind… because this is the journey he is on. Ben’s projects have been selected and screened at CAFilm, Montreal Independent FIlm Festival, SF Black Film Festival, Cinequest and the Oakland International Film Festival. He has been an SFFILM resident, Berkeley Film Foundation grantee, Cine Qua Non Lab fellow, placed twice as a Sundance 2nd round finalist. Ben is currently at work on developing the feature version of The Lake Merritt Monster and writing two new films.
SIDEWALK FILM FESTIVAL FELLOW:
Kendra Christel — Douglasville, GA, USA — In His Image // Drama Feature
Logline: When her drag queen brother is brutally assaulted, a shy introvert challenges the norms of her small Texas town by entering a stiletto marathon in his honor and completely reinvents herself in hopes of winning.
Bio: Born and raised in Texas, Kendra considers herself a Southern-fried maverick who loves to tell Southern tales just South of somebody's God. A Jill of all trades, she found her love for writing, specifically, when she won her first essay contest at 8 years old. She earned a B.A. in Journalism from Texas State University, as well as an M.F.A. in Screenwriting from the University of Georgia. As an up-and-coming drama and genre screenwriter, Kendra has advanced as an Austin Film Festival, Hillman Grad, Big Break, and Nicholl Semifinalist; a 2nd rounder in the Black Boy/Girl Writes and NBC Universal writers’ programs; a Finalist in London's Outstanding Screenplays Competition; and a winner of WeScreenplay's Feature Competition. Kendra is currently in production for her first short film. When off the page, she’s on the stage doing theatre or performing drag to raise money and awareness as an LGBTQ+ ally.
STOWE DIVERSE VOICES FELLOW:
Brandon Vedder — Auburn, CA, USA — Miracle Man // Drama TV – 1 hour
Logline: After a mysterious 20-year absence, a famed 50’s child preacher returns grown to the raucous tent revival movement he helped create, now secretly intent on exposing its hypocrisy and fraud on the biggest stage of all.
Bio: Brandon Vedder is an award-winning filmmaker who began his career touring with and making films about musicians. This foundation led into a season of character-driven documentary filmmaking with subjects ranging from an impassioned young pro soccer team to a sage-like hospital chaplain counseling patients through their final days. In the 20 years since, Brandon’s documentary work has included the award-winning and theatrically released films LA SOURCE, IN PURSUIT OF SILENCE, and STRANGE NEGOTIATIONS. The latter gave Brandon the opportunity to weave together the two factors most impactful on his storytelling; music and faith. Starting with its premiere at SXSW in 2019, STRANGE NEGOTIATIONS played to crowds in over 30 cities creating impactful post-screening conversations and gathering critical acclaim along the way. Though Brandon has written & directed a handful of short fiction films, his new limited drama series MIRACLE MAN marks his first meaningful foray into the world of scripted storytelling.
STOWE DIVERSE VOICES HONORABLE MENTION:
Stacie Hawkins — Carson, CA, USA — Midnight Marauders // Historical Drama Action TV – 1 hour
STUDIO SKYFIRE FELLOW:
Ruth Jiang — Los Angeles, CA, USA — The Hand // SciFi Drama TV – 1 hour
Logline: When a recently disabled athlete and other misfits fight back against the mysterious biotech company rapidly taking over their Midwestern town, they discover the secret behind the company's miraculous healing treatment — monstrous body parts stolen from another universe.
Bio: Ruth is a Chinese-American screenwriter from St. Paul, Minnesota. She spent her college years struggling to stay awake in class while moonlighting as a freelance music publicist and writer, working on various campaigns for Universal Music Group and profiling artists for publications like Bandcamp and LADYGUNN. Inspired by the truths and vulnerabilities of the artists she worked with, Ruth finally became empowered to start writing her own stories upon graduating in 2019. As a screenwriter, Ruth pairs alternate futures and fantastical situations grounded in the real world with messy second-gen family dynamics and the Midwestern Asian-American experience. She was a finalist for the 2022 Mentorship Matters program and a semifinalist for the 2023 Black List x WIF Episodic Lab. Ruth graduated from Wellesley College and currently resides in Los Angeles.
STUDIO SKYFIRE HONORABLE MENTION:
Trevor Zhou — Alhambra, CA, USA — Untitled Slasher // Horror Comedy Feature
TANGERINE ENTERTAINMENT FELLOW:
Alessandra Bautze — Decatur, GA, USA — Racing the Wolf God // Sports Drama Feature
Logline: Set in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta of Alaska, this drama follows a 26-year-old Yup’ik woman and former champion musher who, after ten years in prison, faces the challenges of re-entry as she finds herself back in the world of dogsled racing—the exact activity that led to her incarceration in the first place.
Bio: Alessandra Bautze is Assistant Professor of Screenwriting at Georgia State University. She holds an M.F.A. in Screenwriting from The University of Texas at Austin, as well as a B.A. in The Writing Seminars and Film & Media Studies from The Johns Hopkins University. Her work seeks to reflect the diversity of the American experience while also embracing a socially-conscious, realist approach to narrative. Her screenplay RACING THE WOLF GOD won Best Screenplay at the 2021 Anchorage International Film Festival. In addition to her work as a writer, Alessandra also works as a script consultant, most recently for SignWorld Studios, a Deaf-owned production company focusing on producing authentic media in American Sign Language and English. In November 2021, she was one of six writers selected to participate in the 2021 Nanjing International Writers’ Residency Program, where she participated in a virtual cultural exchange with Chinese writers. In July 2022, she returned to Alaska to participate in the Storyknife Writers Residency Program for women writers in Homer, Alaska. She believes in the power of language to connect communities.
TANGERINE ENTERTAINMENT HONORABLE MENTION:
Sarah Tihany — Brooklyn, NY, USA — Ghost Flower // Western Thriller Feature
UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT FELLOW:
Pierce Deboer — Burlington, VT, USA — Camp Z // Drama, Thriller TV
Logline: In Camp Z the world has been overrun by a deadly airborne virus that has killed all of the adults in the world. The children who remain are mysteriously immune to the airborne variant of the virus, but now have to survive in a world without any help from adults, not to mention the mindless zombies that those adults have become. The show is meant to be a fantastical representation of the fear of missing out on childhood that I witnessed firsthand at summer camp during the COVID-19 pandemic. The campers in my group were intensely emotionally affected by being forced to stay inside for months, but we were able to give them a sense of normality at our summer camp, even with the intense health regulations that we had to work with. The show is meant to demonstrate this experience, in a far worse situation.
Bio: Pierce Deboer is a junior at the University of Vermont, an athlete on the UVM track and field team, and a writer with a passion for filmmaking. He started his screenwriting journey in high school, where he signed up for a screenwriting elective that would never see the light of day, as he was the only one who signed up. Pierce took matters into his own hands and reached out to the instructor of the screenwriting class that was never meant to be. He gave Pierce two books: Syd Field’s Screenplay and Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! which is where his journey in screenwriting really began. Since then, Pierce has furthered his education on screenwriting at UVM through classes with Professor Sarah Nilsen as well as independent writing groups.
CONGRATULATIONS EVERYONE!
The semifinalists and finalists for fellowships to our programs are decided through a competitive application review by the Stowe Story Labs Review Team. This year the NYX team selected the finalists.
The final selection for the Bellem Entertainment, Film Fatales, Law Firm of Stacey A. Davis. Maven Screen Media, Nyx Horror Collective, SAGindie, Sidewalk Film Festival, Studio SKYFIRE, and Tangerine fellowships are made by our partners for those fellowships. Congratulations again to all.
