Los Angeles – The Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) has announced its Feature Access Project (FAP) honorees, recognizing five members who competed in the Guild’s pilot diversity screenwriting program. They are:
· Chuck Hayward for Potluck
· Dwayne Johnson-Cochran for Bibi
· Vivian Lee for Eve at the Bar
· Zak Shaikh for The Ignoble Rise of Lord Rex
· Paula Yoo for Popular ScienceCoordinated by the WGAW Diversity Department, the project seeks to identify outstanding diverse writers and make their scripts available to entertainment industry decision-makers, including producers, studio executives, agents and managers, to help raise their profile and generate potential employment opportunities. More information about the honorees and complete versions of their screenplays can be found at: www.wga.org/fap.html. Each honoree will be paired with an established WGAW feature writer who will serve as a career mentor.
For FAP consideration, qualified minority writers were invited to submit a current, feature-length, unproduced spec script. Entries were read and scored on a blind submission basis by a panel of judges comprised of WGAW members recruited by the FAP Advisory Committee.
This is a powerful program. Our hats off to the Winners…and to the Writers Guild of America, West, for instituting it.