Thank you to all of the incredible writers who entered Diverse Voices this year! Your hard work, talent, and dedication to storytelling shines through in the entries we received.
We are thrilled to welcome the Grand Prize Winners for our Diverse Voices Screenwriting Lab. The Lab will include hands-on development with industry executives, WeScreenplay staff, writers, and each other. It’ll also include meetings with executives and managers about the writers, their career, and their projects in development.
If you are interested in hearing the next time this competition opens, subscribe for updates here.
We have chosen our winners thanks to a wonderful team of readers and many thanks to our fantastic Jury of industry professionals for their insights! Our jurors included:
Joy Ganes, President of Tracy Oliver’s (GIRLS TRIP, FIRST WIVES CLUB) production company, Tracy Yvonne Productions, which is committed to championing diverse voices of all genres, across TV, film, and digital media.
Kesila Childers, Vice President of Development for Paul Feig’s digital content company Powderkeg, that aims to champion new voices with a commitment to female and LGBTQ creators and filmmakers of color.
Jess Burkle, TV writer currently staffed on the CW show IN THE DARK — who happens to be blind himself.
Louisa Minghella, a literary agent at Blake Friedmann Literary Agency in the UK who focuses on representing diverse talent.
Without further ado, the Spring 2021 Diverse Voices Winners can be found on Coverfly here or below.
Grand Prize Winners (listed in alphabetical order by script title):
JIYAN, feature script by Daniela Saioni & Mazdak Taebi
When a Kurdish refugee loses himself in an odd Minnesota border town on the Fourth of July weekend, he lives out new adventures fuelled by his imagination while unknowingly being hunted as a ‘terrorist’.
MISS DICKPUNCHER, feature script by Emily-Anne Mikos
After a sixteen-year-old girl panics while attempting to lose her virginity and punches her partner’s dick, her parents send her to an all-girls etiquette camp where she must solicit the help of her delinquent CIT in order to lose her “V” card before the summer of ’84 ends.
NO THANK YOU, 1/2 hr pilot by Brittany Kelly
Tawnie, a plus size Caribbean woman living in LA fed up with her romantic connections not panning out, drunkenly places an explicit personal pleading for sex ad that gets over 500 replies.
SOUTH CHINA SEA, 1 hr pilot by Yancey Wang
In the 1800s, when China and Britain are on the brink of the Opium War, a swordsman’s daughter falsely accused of murder joins a band of pirates. As romance grows between her and a notorious pirate captain, so does her desire to become the most powerful outlaw in Colonial Asia.
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