2024 Go Into The Story Highlights: Interviews with 2023 Nicholl Fellows

I have interviewed every Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting recipient since 2012 including last year’s winners. Via the Academy:

The 2023 winners are (listed alphabetically by author):

Brent Delaney (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), “Brownie Mary”
At the height of the AIDS crisis, Mary Jane Rathbun illegally distributes cannabis-infused brownies to heal thousands of gay men in San Francisco and inadvertently becomes the face of the first medical marijuana movement in U.S. history.

Harris McCabe (Los Angeles, CA), “Nat Cady’s Boys”
Two young boys seek bloody vengeance on the posse that hung their outlaw father in 1882 Wyoming.

J. Miller (Burbank, CA), “Slugger”
Abandoned by her mother and coached by her unloving father, a high school baseball prodigy with a hot temper and thunderous bat must confront old-school coaches, jealous teammates, injuries, and her own sexual identity on an inspirational quest to be the first woman to play in the Majors.

c. Craig Patterson (Los Angeles, CA), “Tah”
The black sheep of the family comes back home to live with the most difficult matriarch in New Orleans.

Kayla Sun (Los Angeles, CA), “Boy, Girl, Fig”
Aden was born with a rare condition where he becomes invisible to people who love him. He struggles when he falls in love with his childhood best friend.

A total of 5,599 scripts, from 83 countries, were submitted for the 2023 competition. The first and quarterfinal rounds were judged by industry professionals, including graduates of the Academy’s Diverse Reader Training Workshop, a free referral-only program established to train individuals from underrepresented communities to be story analysts. The semifinal round was judged by Academy members across the spectrum of the motion picture industry. Thirteen individual screenwriters were selected as finalists. Their scripts were then read and judged by the Academy Nicholl Fellowships Committee, who ultimately voted the winners.

Go Into The Story interviews are in-depth conversations delving into each writer’s creative background, their Nicholl-winning screenplay, and their thoughts on key subjects related to the craft of screenwriting.

Here are links to each of the interviews with the 2023 Nicholl recipients:

Brent Delaney
Harris McCabe
Jimmy Miller
c. Craig Patterson
Kayla Sun

I did not attend film school. My education has been a lifelong pursuit of knowledge through watching and studying movies, reading and analyzing screenplays, writing and rewriting thousands of pages, and absorbing insights from every writer interview I can find.

I provide these interviews to Go Into The Story readers precisely for that reason: To make these resources available to screenwriters.

I encourage you to read these interviews as well as all of the Nicholl interviews dating back to 2012 … with more to come! I just today finished my fifth and final interview of the 2024 Nicholl Fellows. Look for those to roll out in January and February next year!

Go Into The Story Interviews — Nicholl Fellowship Writers

For more information about the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting program, go here.