MASTER OF CEREMONIESDEAN CATHERINE QUINLAN

CATHERINE QUINLAN is the inaugural holder of the Valerie and Ronald Sugar Dean’s Chair of the USC Libraries. She is responsible for guiding the university’s efforts to establish the model for the 21st-century library by providing leadership for USC’s library faculty and staff; collaborating with other university deans, faculty, and friends to optimize and develop resources for scholars; and building partnerships with a variety of cultural institutions throughout Southern California and beyond.

Quinlan came to USC after a decade at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where she headed a library system encompassing 300 full-time staff members and more than 21 sites. Beginning in 2004, she also served as managing director of UBC’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Before joining UBC, she spent seven years as director of libraries and chief librarian at the University of Western Ontario, and as an adjunct professor in the university’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Previously, Quinlan oversaw the health sciences library at Memorial University of Newfoundland and was a member of the adjunct business administration faculty.

She holds an MBA from Memorial University of Newfoundland, a master of library studies degree from Dalhousie University, and a bachelor of music degree from Queen’s University.

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NAOMI FONER has spent her career as a screenwriter exploring the exquisite complications of family. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and received the PEN West and Golden Globe Awards for Running on Empty, starring River Phoenix and directed by Sidney Lumet. She wrote and produced A Dangerous Woman, starring Debra Winger, Barbara Hershey, and Gabriel Byrne; Losing Isaiah with Jessica Lange and Halle Berry; and Violets are Blue, starring Sissy Spacek and Kevin Kline. Her adaptation of Myla Goldberg’s novel Bee Season, starring Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche, was released by Fox Searchlight in 2005.

Very Good Girls, for which she wrote the original screenplay, is the first time she has directed her own work. The film, which features Dakota Fanning, Elizabeth Olsen, and Boyd Holbrook, premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

HOWARD A. RODMAN is vice president of the Writers Guild of America, West; professor and former chair of the writing division at the USC School of Cinematic Arts; and an artistic director of the Sundance Institute Screenwriting Labs.

His films Savage Grace and August had their US premieres at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Savage Grace was nominated for a Spirit Award in the Best Screenplay category. Rodman also wrote Joe Gould’s Secret, which opened the 2000 Sundance Film Festival.

SCRIPTER AWARD SELECTION COMMITTEENAOMI FONER and HOWARD A. RODMAN

CO-CHAIRS

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SCRIPTER AWARD SELECTION COMMITTEE

NAOMI FONER and HOWARD A. RODMAN, Co-chairs

SCRIPTER AWARD SELECTION COMMITTEE SCRIPTER AWARD SELECTION COMMITTEE

NAOMI FONER and HOWARD A. RODMAN, Co-chairs

Albert Berger

Robert Bloomingdale

Leo Braudy

Ted Braun

Michael Chabon*

Dean Elizabeth Daley

Jack Epps, Jr.

Mark Fergus*

Geoffrey Fletcher

Naomi Foner

Daryle Ann Giardino

Kaui Hart Hemmings*

Nick Hornby

Gale Anne Hurd

Lawrence Kasdan*

Nicholas Kazan

Chris Keyser

Jonathan Lethem

Claudia Lewis

Leonard Maltin

Mike Medavoy

Gail Mutrux

Michael Ondaatje*

Hawk Ostby*

Dean Madeline Puzo

Dean Catherine Quinlan

Howard Rodman

Eric Roth*

Michelle Satter

Tom Schulman

Brad Simpson

Mona Simpson

Glenn A. Sonnenberg

Wesley Strick

Robin Swicord

Anne Thompson

Jennifer Todd

Suzanne Todd

Kenneth Turan

Josh Welsh

Erin Cressida Wilson

*Previous Scripter winner

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SCRIPTER AWARD FINALISTS

SCRIPTER AWARD FINALISTS

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ARGOANTONIO J. MENDEZ and JOSHUAH BEARMAN, authorsCHRIS TERRIO, screenwriterWilliam Morrow and Wired, publishers; Warner Bros., studio

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILDLUCY ALIBAR, author and screenwriterBENH ZEITLIN, screenwriterDiversion Books, publisher; Fox Searchlight, studio

LIFE OF PIYANN MARTEL, authorDAVID MAGEE, screenwriterMariner Books, publisher; 20th Century Fox, studio

LINCOLNDORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, authorTONY KUSHNER, screenwriterMariner Books, publisher; DreamWorks, studio

THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWERSTEPHEN CHBOSKY, author and screenwriterMTV Books, publisher; Summit Entertainment, studio

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOKMATTHEW QUICK, authorDAVID O. RUSSELL, screenwriterSarah Crichton Books, publisher; The Weinstein Company, studio

SCRIPTER AWARD FINALISTSARGO

ANTONIO (TONY) MENDEZ served in the CIA for twenty-five years, specializing in covert operations, specifically with forging documents, creating disguises, and other work related to the field of espionage. A highly decorated officer, he received the Intelligence Star for Valor for the “Canadian Caper,” also known as the Argo operation. The author of four nonfiction works about his time at the agency, including Master of Disguise and Spy Dust, Mendez lives with his family in rural Maryland outside of Washington, DC.

JOSHUAH BEARMAN is a former staff writer and editor for LA Weekly. He currently writes for Rolling Stone, Harper’s, Wired, The New York Times Magazine, McSweeney’s, and The Huffington Post. Bearman was a contributing producer on the documentary, The King of Kong. Several of his articles have been optioned for film and television adaptation. His 2007 Wired article about the CIA’s Argo mission was, along with Mendez’s autobiography, the basis for the film’s screenplay. Bearman is a board member of 826LA, a nonprofit tutoring center in Los Angeles. He lives in Hollywood and is currently working on a book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

ANTONIO MENDEZ and JOSHUAH BEARMAN, authors

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USC alumnus CHRIS TERRIO (’02, Cinema-Television) made his feature screenwriting debut with Argo, which has earned him Academy Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and WGA Award nominations. His first feature-length film, Heights, starring Glenn Close, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released by Sony Pictures Classics in 2005. Terrio directed Close once again in 2010 on an episode of the Emmy Award-winning television series Damages.

His upcoming projects include a film of his original screenplay The Ends of the Earth; Tell No One, an adaptation of Harlan Coben’s book of the same title; a screenplay based on David Grann’s New Yorker article “A Murder Foretold,” about a series of high-level murders in Guatemala; and an original screenplay for director Paul Greengrass. He lives in his hometown of New York City.

CHRIS TERRIO, screenwriter

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SCRIPTER AWARD FINALISTSBEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

LUCY ALIBAR is a screenwriter, playwright, and storyteller from the Florida panhandle. She co-wrote with director Behn Zeitlin, whom she met in summer camp as a teenager, Beasts of the Southern Wild, based on her original one-act play Juicy and Delicious.

Alibar’s other plays include A Friend of Dorothy (a finalist for Best Play at the Montreal Fringe), Lightning/Picnic, and Mommy Says I’m Pretty on the Insides. She is a Sundance Screenwriting Fellow, two-time finalist for the Heideman Award at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, and winner of Young Playwrights, Inc. Alibar is currently writing a feature-length film based on her play Christmas and Jubilee Behold the Meteor Shower.

LUCY ALIBAR, author and screenwriterPh

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Born in New York, BENH ZEITLIN began his career as a filmmaker at the age of 6, making a Batman movie with a friend. Soon after graduating from Wesleyan University with a major in film, he helped start an independent filmmaking collective, Court 13. He moved to New Orleans in 2008 where he made the short film, Glory at Sea, set amidst the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina.

His feature film debut Beasts of the Southern Wild also touches upon humankind’s battle against the elements in the Louisiana bayou. The fantasy film won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, multiple awards at the Cannes Film Festival, and is currently nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.

BENH ZEITLIN, screenwriter

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SCRIPTER AWARD FINALISTSLIFE OF PI

YANN MARTEL is best known for the Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi, first published in 2001. Born in Spain to a Canadian diplomat, Martel spent extended time in Costa Rica, France, Iran, Mexico, and Turkey—places that provided the kind of cultural tapestry he has woven throughout his writing. In preparation for writing Pi he spent six months in India visiting mosques, temples, churches and zoos, and then an entire year reading religious texts and castaway stories. Martel currently lives in Saskatoon, Canada.

YANN MARTEL, author

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DAVID MAGEE was nominated in 2004 for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for the screenplay to Finding Neverland, based on a play about the life of Peter Pan author J. M. Barrie. On the set of the film he read—and was immediately entranced by—the book Life of Pi, but had doubts the intricate work could ever be filmed until director Ang Lee came on board.

Another of Magee’s works to make it to screen is also an adaptation—along with Simon Beaufoy he wrote the screenplay for the 2008 film Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, based on the 1938 novel of the same name by Winifred Watson and starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams.

DAVID MAGEE, screenwriter

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SCRIPTER AWARD FINALISTSLINCOLN

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian known especially for her nonfiction work on the American presidents Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Her 2005 publication Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln became a New York Times bestseller and won both the prestigious Lincoln Prize and the inaugural Book Prize for American History. She appears frequently as a political news analyst on all of the major news networks and has made guest appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The Colbert Report.

In addition to her renowned work in the field of politics, Goodwin has written a book and numerous articles about baseball and contributed to Ken Burns’ documentary on the subject. Notably, she was the first female journalist allowed into the Boston Red Sox locker room. She is married to the presidential advisor and speechwriter Richard Goodwin, who worked in the White House under both Kennedy and Johnson.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, author

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Born in New York City and raised in Louisiana, TONY KUSHNER is perhaps best known for his play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (1993). His work often tackles some of the most difficult subjects in contemporary history—including AIDS, the conservative counter-revolution, Afghanistan vs. the West, German fascism, racism, and the civil rights movement—in the process giving voice to marginalized characters who have been rendered powerless by the forces of circumstances.

Kushner has won multiple accolades for his wide-ranging work, including a Pulitzer Prize, an Emmy Award, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, an Oscar nomination, and an Arts Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among many others. In addition to the screenplay for the Mike Nichols film of Angels in America, he wrote the adaptation for Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005) and Lincoln. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.

TONY KUSHNER, screenwriter

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TWENTY-FIFTH ANNUAL SCRIPTER AWARD 25U n i v e r s i t y o f S o u t h e r n C a l i f o r n i a

SCRIPTER AWARD FINALISTSTHE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

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STEPHEN CHBOSKY (’92, Cinema-Television) wrote and directed the feature film adaptation of his coming-of-age novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, first published by MTV Books in 1999. The semi-autobiographical novel is narrated by “Charlie,” the alias of a high school freshman who writes to an anonymous correspondent a series of letters that reveal the emotional turbulence and awkwardness of adolescence.

A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Chbosky is a graduate of USC’s screenwriting program. His first film, The Four Corners of Nowhere, premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 1995. He wrote the screenplay for the critically acclaimed film adaptation of Rent and co-created the post-apocalyptic television drama, Jericho. He also edited Pieces, a collection of short stories for Pocket Books. Chbosky currently resides in Los Angeles.

STEPHEN CHBOSKY, author and screenwriter

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SCRIPTER AWARD FINALISTSSILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

MATTHEW QUICK earned a degree in English literature from La Salle University and an MFA from Goddard College in Vermont. He left his job as an English teacher in New Jersey to write his debut novel, The Silver Linings Playbook, which tells the story of a man suffering from mental illness but striving to put his life back together after his release from a neurology hospital. The story received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention. He has since written two novels for young adults, Sorta Like a Rock Star and Boy21. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, the novelist Alicia Bessette.

MATTHEW QUICK, author

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DAVID O. RUSSELL made his writing and directing debut in 1994 with Spanking the Monkey, which won the Sundance Film Festival’s Audience Award and Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards. He followed the work with the well-received Flirting with Disaster (1996) and the Gulf War drama Three Kings (1999), which appeared on more than one hundred critics’ top ten lists and was awarded the Boston Film Critics Society Film of the Year. His 2010 film The Fighter earned seven Oscar nominations, including his first for Best Director and Best Picture. Silver Linings Playbook is nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, and all four acting categories. Russell has also been instrumental in the success of the Ghetto Film School, a New York academy that teaches the cinematic arts to young Black and Latino filmmakers from the South Bronx and Harlem.

DAVID O. RUSSELL, screenwriter

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LARRY MCMURTRY was born in Wichita Falls and raised on a ranch outside Archer City, Texas. After earning degrees from North Texas State University and Rice he spent a year as a Stegner fellow at Stanford University. McMurtry has authored more than forty works, several of which have been made into feature films, including The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, and the miniseries Lonesome Dove (for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1986). McMurtry has also written numerous screenplays, including Brokeback Mountain, which he co-wrote with his longtime writing partner Diana Ossana. They are currently collaborating on the screenplay adaptation of Paulette Jiles’s novel The Color of Lightning. For nearly twenty-five years he has owned and operated Booked Up, a large used bookstore in Archer City. McMurtry divides his time between Texas and Arizona.

DIANA OSSANA was born and raised in St. Louis. Since 1992 she has collaborated with Larry McMurtry in writing several novels and screenplays. The fruits of this work include the novels Pretty Boy Floyd and Zeke and Ned, as well as over thirty feature film scripts. They were co-writers and co-executive producers on three award-winning miniseries: Streets of Laredo, Dead Man’s Walk, and Johnson County War. In 2005 they won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (from a short story by Annie Proulx). She has been a juror for the American Film Institute’s annual selection of the Ten Best Films of the Year in 2006, 2007, and 2011. Ossana also taught screenwriting and writing of historical fiction at the University of Iowa.

SCRIPTER LITERARY ACHIEVEMENT AWARDLARRY McMURTRY and DIANA OSSANA

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