Greg Bills (’93, ’94) received his B.A. from the University of Utah, his home state, and then graduated with an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. His first novel, Consider This Home, published by Simon & Schuster in 1994 was a Literary Guild alternate selection and was published in England by Marion Boyars. Fearful Symmetry, his second novel, was published by Dutton/Penguin and also in trade paperback from Plume. His stories and essays have appeared in various journals and reviews, including an essay “Jack and The Giant,” which was featured in Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales. Other recent work includes fiction in the Santa Monica Review and a retelling of the Ridinghood story in the Red Issue of Fairy Tale Review. He is currently a Professor of Creative Writing and Coordinator of the Visiting Writers Series at the University of Redlands.
Screenwriting Workshops Alumni
David Corbett (’88, ’89, ’91,’99, ’01) is the author of The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar), Do They Know I’m Running (for which Publishers Weekly gave a starred review), The Mercy of the Night, a collection of stories, Thirteen Confessions, and his newest The Long Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday (Black Opal Books). His novella, The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell, is now available as an ebook. David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including Mission and Tenth, The Smoking Poet, and Best American Mystery Stories (2009 and 2011). His writing guide, The Art of Character, was published in 2013. He has taught at the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, and at Book Passage in Corte Madera, California, as well as at numerous other writing conferences across the US.
William Farley’s films and documentaries have won numerous awards and have been broadcast and screened around the world, including the Mannheim, Chicago, Sydney, Ann Arbor and New York Film Festivals. His two fiction features opened at the Sundance Film Festival. Citizen, I’m Not Losing My Mind, I’m Giving It Away, went on to a one month run at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and Of Men and Angels which was in the dramatic competition and nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. He won a Clio for the best public service announcement of the year, for his collaboration with Father Guido Sarducci and George Manupelli, for Become An Artist, for the San Francisco Art Institute. He has recently completed his 21st film, The Walk, a portrait of this state park, an it’s mysterious alluring beauty. Presently, he is directing a documentary about the Artist Jerry Ross Barrish.
An Irish/Canadian/Arkansan, Daniel Hanna (’08) never quite knew where he belonged until he moved to Hollywood. His lauded indie Hard Miles (Matthew Modine, Sean Astin) played 600 screens in the US and UK. His previous film Miss Virginia landed deals with BET and Netflix. His new erotic thriller Succubus (Ron Perlman, Rosanna Arquette) breaks all the rules. He’s a proud Academy Nicholl Fellow for Screenwriting, and editor of over a dozen feature films.
Photo Credit: Holly Shorts
Jennifer Juelich the writer/director for Neon Sky Films and a graduate from San Francisco State University with a B.A. in creative writing. She has written and directed three short films (Legacy, An Honest Man, Cross Town) and two feature length films (Love Doll,Neon Sky). Curretnly she is in post-production on Neon Sky with Lloyd Silverman, (Executive Producer of the film Snow Fall on Cedars, as our executive producer and Debbie Brubaker as producer. Production wrapped in Summer 2013 for her teaser trailer for my most recent script ‘Ghost Town’. www.neonskyfilms.com
Photo Credit: Amy Braswell
Nancy Kelly is a writer, director, and producer in partnership with Editor/Producer Kenji Yamamoto, who made Rebels With A Cause, winner of one of the Mill Valley Film Festival’s Audience Favorite awards. She also made documentary trilogy about the transformative power of art: TRUST: Second Acts in Young Lives, about a Honduran teen whose life story is unveiled in a daring original play; Smitten, about art collector Rene di Rosa, who is smitten by art; and Downside Up, about how MASS MoCA revived Kelly’s dying home town. She also directed and produced the narrative feature Thousand Pieces of Gold, starring Rosalind Chao and Chris Cooper and written by Squaw Valley alumna Anne Makepeace. She attended the Community of Writers in 1983, 2000 (Screenwriting) and 2006 (Writers Workshops.)
Richard Levien has been writing, directing and editing films for 8 years. Levien’s short film Immersion, about a ten-year-old boy from Mexico who struggles to fit in at his new school in the U.S., premiered at Slamdance in 2009. Immersion won the “No Violence” award at the Ann Arbor film festival, and Best Bay Area Short Film at the San Francisco International Film Festival. The film received a Resolution of the California Legislature, and is being used by more than 50 school districts and universities around the U.S. Levien’s current feature project “La Migra” won SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grants in 2009 (for screenwriting) and 2013 (for development). Levien’s editing credits include D Tour (Best Bay Area Documentary Feature, 2009 San Francisco International Film Festival, PBS Independent Lens) and the ITVS film “A Fragile Trust” (2013) about the worst plagiarist in the history of the New York Times. Levien is from New Zealand. He has a PhD in theoretical physics from Princeton University. He attended the Community of Writers in 2013.
Photo by Lennette Newell
Photo Credit: Silvia Matheus
Laura Glen Louis is the author of the story collection, Talking in the Dark, a Barnes & Noble Discover Book. Recipient of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize, she has had work anthologized in Best American Short Stories. Her recent book is Some, like elephants, a chapbook of elegies (El León Literary Arts). Her essay, “A Man and an Epigram Walk Into a Bar,” was recently published online by Michigan Quarterly Review. She attended the Community of Writers in 1987 and 1988. www.lauraglenlouis.com
Photo Credit: Lori A. Cheung
Regina Louise is the author of the bestselling memoir Somebody’s Someone. She has been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” as well as The CBS Early Show. Regina’s story has also garnered nationwide attention in newspapers and magazines including San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and The Philadelphia Tribune. She optioned her story for film and a play, which premiered May 2007. www.reginalouise.com
Photo Credit: Stacey Doyle
Caitlin McCarthy received her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Emerson College, which is ranked by U.S. News & World Report as one of the best graduate programs in the country. An award-winning screenwriter at international film festivals and labs, Caitlin has written two feature films: Wonder Drug, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation script at the Hamptons Screenwriters Lab and a Semifinalist in the 2017 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting (one of only 151 entries to advance from the Quarterfinal Round, with 7,102 scripts entered); and Resistance, a script accepted into the exclusive Squaw Valley Screenwriters Program, which is made possible with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Caitlin is also partnering on writing/creating the TV series “Pass/Fail” with Jim Forbes, a multiple Emmy, ALMA, AP and Golden Mic award-winning writer, producer, correspondent, and narrator (most notably VH1’s iconic “Behind The Music”); and writing/creating the TV series “Free Skate.” Furthermore, Caitlin’s TV spec scripts have won awards or advanced in prestigious competitions such as the Austin Film Festival; Final Draft Big Break; and Stage32. In addition to screenwriting, Caitlin serves as an English teacher at an inner-city public high school. Prior to education, Caitlin worked in public relations, where she fostered relationships with the press and crafted messages for companies that were delivered worldwide.
Kimberly Reed is a filmmaker living in New York City. Her work has been featured on Oprah, CNN, NPR, Details magazine, and The Moth Radio Hour. Her work has made her one of Filmmaker Magazine‘s “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) fellow, and has led to multiple fellowships at the Yaddo Artists’ Community. She directed and produced Prodigal Sons, a “whiplash doc that heralds an exciting talent.” Prodigal Sons, a co-production with BBC Storyville and Sundance Channel, premiered at the Telluride Film Festival. The film has gone on to be shown around the globe in theaters, at over a hundred film festivals, and on worldwide television. The film landed on multiple Best of the Year lists and garnered 14 Audience and Jury awards, including the International Film Critics’ FIPRESCI Prize. Ms. Reed was recognized as Towleroad’s “Best LGBT Character of the Film Year.” She was also the producer/editor/writer for Paul Goodman Changed My Life, released theatrically by Zeitgeist Films. She attended the Community of Writers in 2006. www.kimberlyreed.com
Photo Credit: by Mathew Zucker
Tamuira Reid is a writer and educator living in New York City. Her first feature-length screenplay, Luna’s Highway, which she developed at Squaw in 2010, was recently optioned. The script earned her a 2010 Finalist placement in Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope Screenwriting Competition and a 2010 Semifinalist placement in The Nicholls Screenwriting Fellowship Competition, sponsored by The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Tamuira taught screenwriting as a guest faculty member at the Global Social Change Film Festival and Institute in 2011, in Bali, Indonesia, and again in 2012 in New Orleans. The recipient of an NYU 2013 Creative Research Grant, she is now beginning work on a drama set in rural Oregon.
Marlene Shigekawa is the producer and co-writer of the documentary film, For the Sake of the Children, to be released in October 2014. . As a screenwriter, she has written, Hawk Dreamer, for which she has won several screenwriting awards, Hunting Picassoand Mohave Junction. With her writing partner, Matthew Riutta, she has written TV pilots, Skip West and Proud Mary. A children’s books author of Blue Jay in the Desert and Welcome Home Swallows, her book readings have been broadcast on National Public Radio. She is the author of Succeeding in High Tech: A Guide to Building Your Career, published by John Wiley & Sons, and articles for the Wall Street Journal’s National Employment Weekly. She attended the Screenwriting Program in 2006 and 2012. www://forthesakeofthechildren.blogspot.com
Amy Tan’s novels are The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning, and Valley of Amazement. She is the author of two memoirs, The Opposite of Fate and Where the Past Begins; and two children’s books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat. Tan served as co-producer and co-screenwriter for the film adaptation of The Joy Luck Club and creative consultant for the PBS television series, Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat. She wrote the libretto for the opera The Bonesetter’s Daughter and is the subject of the American Masters documentary Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir. Tan is an instructor of a MasterClass on Fiction, Memory, and Imagination. She is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her most recent book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles (Knopf, April 2024) marks her debut as a nature journalist and bird artist. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers.
Tim Wendel (’86, ’87, ’88, ’89, ’05) is the author of 14 books, including Summer of ’68, Castro’s Curveball, and the family memoir Cancer Crossings. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, National Geographic, GQ, and Esquire. He has won JHU’s Excellence in Teaching Award three times and the program’s Outstanding Professional Achievement award three times. A graduate of the MA in Writing program, Tim’s other honors include the Latino History Book Award, a Notable Book Award by the State of Michigan, and an Editor’s Selection by The New York Times. His most recent work, Rebel Falls, will be published in May 2024.