YOUR IMPACT
2024

2024 was a busy year for the Writers Guild Foundation. We launched the brand new Veterans Fellowship, brought back our popular Write-A-Thon events, and introduced our Library and Archive to folks both here at home and around the world—all while maintaining our usual level of support for existing WGF programs and resources.

Donors like you make our work possible, so THANK YOU for supporting the Foundation! As a special thanks, here’s how we put your generosity into action last year. 

To download a PDF version of this report, click here.

WGF’s Commitment to Fostering Talent

In 2024, we had a renewed focus on supporting our program alumni as they navigate their careers in entertainment. We launched the brand new Our Talent page where prospective employers and representation can learn more about our alumni, gain access to our exclusive Talent Portal, and receive curated hiring recommendations.

In November, we also hosted the first ever WGF Talent Mixer. This mixer brought together more than 100 WGF program alumni, agents, managers, executives, and WGA members to help forge new connections that our alumni can leverage to further their careers in film and television.

Introducing…WGF’s Veterans Fellowship!

Since 2010, the Writers Guild Foundation has supported emerging writers from military backgrounds through the Veterans Writing Project. Today, the program is one of the strongest of its kind.

However, drastic changes in the industry over the last decade have made breaking in as a professional screenwriter more challenging than ever. In February, WGF launched the Veterans Fellowship to better serve our growing pool of talented alumni.

The fellowship’s mission is to provide educational resources, professional guidance, and career-building opportunities for Veterans Writing Project alumni who are on the threshold of breaking into the industry. Over the course of eight weeks, our fellows polished scripts with the support of their mentors and participated in a variety of mock staffing meetings, general meetings, and writers’ rooms.

On April 10, Shawn Ryan (S.W.A.T., The Night Agent) joined our fellows for an intimate roundtable discussion. The prolific writer/producer shared valuable insight with our fellows on navigating the industry.

In late July, WGF launched a promotional campaign to promote the 2024 Veterans Fellowship Lookbook. As a result, fellows have seen successes like landing meetings and interviews at places like ABC, Fox, and Escape Artists Productions; securing representation; and pitching projects to studios. Most recently, alumna Nicole Schwegman was hired by writer and producer Craig Sweeny (Watson) as a Showrunner’s Assistant.

Interested in hiring one of our fellows? Check out our talent portal here.

The Veterans Writing Project

On January 27th, we hosted the first ever Midterm Retreat to mark the mid-point of the 2023-24 program. The in-person event featured panels and interactive workshops tailored around the craft and business of writing for the screen. Panels and workshops included:

For the second half of the 2023-24 program’s monthly meetings section, panels focused on pitching and the business of screenwriting. Then, on April 30 and May 1, we hosted back-to-back Pitch Nights. 49 graduates pitched their projects to showrunners, producers, development executives, agents, managers, and other industry professionals at this concluding event.

On June 1 and 2, we welcomed 46 new participants to the 2024-25 cycle of the Veterans Writing Project at the kickoff Weekend Retreat. Held at the Writers Guild of America, West headquarters, participants met their mentors to discuss story ideas and establish the premise of the script they will develop through the program. Independent filmmaker, producer, and VWP alum John Salcedo also donated free headshots to attendees. The weekend retreat concluded with a lecture by Billy Ray and a closing reception.

The Basic Course portion of the program took place during June and July. This portion of the program included weekly lessons on screenwriting fundamentals like Character, Dialogue, Outlines, Feature and TV Structure, and more. After the Basic Course wrapped, participants switched to meeting twice a month.

Despite facing significant industry-wide obstacles, alumni have continued to build their portfolios and make meaningful connections. We’re proud to share a few examples of their recent successes below:

• ABC is developing Devil’s Ranch, a one-hour military procedural from Will Trent’s Rebecca Murga.

• Spike Lee is developing Liberty, a fleet week dramaedy by Rebecca Murga & Jalysa Conway.

• Alum Josh Flanagan co-created a show with his former mentor John Rice. Jay Roach is attached to direct.

• Jason Inman was promoted to Staff Writer on Craig Sweeny’s show Watson on CBS.

• Sati Kaur was hired as the Story Editor for Amazon’s The Bondsman.

• Showrunner John Hoberg hired Addison Blu and Kat Castaneda as a Consultant and Writers’ Assistant, respectively.

• Melissa Ritz was hired as a Writers’ Assistant on The Corps and Jon-Alexander Genson was hired as a Writers’ Assistant on FBI: Most Wanted.

• Tracy Thompson was hired as a Story Producer at TV One.

• Three alumni graduated from The Academy Career Advancement Initiative’s Story Analyst Workshop, a free introductory workshop hosted by the Nicholl Fellowship. Workshop participants emerge with coverage samples that they can use to apply for jobs doing coverage for production companies, contests, script coverage services, and agents and managers in the film industry.

The Writers’ Access Support Staff Training Program

Earlier this year, we made the difficult decision to adjust the Writers’ Access Support Staff Training Program (WASSTP) timeline to adapt to the current state of the industry. The application period for the 2024 program was postponed for five months, taking place August 1 to September 5. This cycle we received nearly 1,400 applications! 18 candidates were ultimately selected and will start the 12-week course in January 2025.

Postponing the application period allowed us to increase our support our WASSTP alumni in 2024. WGF hosted mixers for WASSTP graduates in February, June, and December to help foster a better sense of community amongst alumni. In April, alumni attended a resilience-building workshop led by Jim Arnoff.  

Also this year, we decided to survey all WASSTP alumni to further support their career ambitions and identify new areas of growth. We asked all alumni, regardless of whether or not they are still seeking support staff positions, to provide data about their background, career progress, and objectives. One exciting survey result: after just three years since WASSTP began in 2021, 9% of graduates are now WGA members!

WASSTP grads continue to find success. Achievements from 2024 include:

• WASSTP alumni Gia King (Agatha All Along) and Daniela Labi (S.W.A.T.) officially joined the WGA as Current members!

• Ida Yazdi was hired as a Staff Writer on NBC’s Extended Family, Angela Sanchez was hired as a Freelance Writer for shows on PBS and Nickelodeon, and Spike Morales-Westlake was hired as an Associate Writer on Disney’s Big City Greens.

• WASSTP grads Xuan Mai, Yeon Jin Lee, Cristina Cibrian, and Rachel Yang were hired as Showrunner’s Assistants for LaToya Morgan (Duster), Craig Sweeny (Watson), Leila Gerstein (Every Year After), and Julianna LaRosa (Tracker), respectively.

• Jon-Alexander Genson was hired as a Writers’ Assistant on FBI: Most Wanted and Shanice Williamson was hired as a Writers’ Assistant on All the Queen’s Men and as a Writers’ Assistant/Script Coordinator on A Man on the Inside.

• Kanisha Williams and Scout Comm were hired as a Script Coordinators on Disney’s Vampirina Revamped and Netflix’s Long Story Short, respectively.

• Glen Mazzara hired two WASSTP alums, Jenna Bosco as a Writers’ Assistant and Catherine Oyster as a Script Coordinator for his upcoming Netflix show, Extraction.

• Lynn Maleh was one of four accepted to Sony’s Diverse Writers Program.

Interested in hiring one of our Writers’ Access alumni? Check out our talent page here.

Visiting Writers

The Visiting Writers Program facilitated seven educational discussions between WGA writers and classrooms across the country in 2024:

• Halley Feiffer (American Horror Story) spoke with students at Southern Oregon University.

• Guillermo Arriaga (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) visited students at the Puerto Rico Film Commission’s The Creative Hub.

• First Channel Media Academy in Armenia hosted two different speaker sessions: one with Joseph Mwamba (Splinter Cell) and one with Christopher Markus (Avengers: Endgame).

• Writers’ Access program instructors Debbie Ezer (Based On A True Story, The Good Doctor) and Clay Lapari (WonderMan, iCarly) hosted an info session for students at CSU Long Beach.

• Writers Juel Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier discussed their film, They Cloned Tyrone, with students at Cal State Fullerton.

• Young Storytellers hosted writers Michael Cobain (Ice) and Melanie Kirschbaum (Grown-ish) for a workshop on how students can navigate telling their personal stories.

Volunteer and Mentorship

WGF continues to partner with other organizations to support literacy and writing programming as part of our Volunteer and Mentorship Program. Active partners in 2024 included:

Some highlights from the Volunteer and Mentorship Program in 2024 include:

• Partnering with Get Lit’s Creative Career Lab, where we connected their students with WGA member guest speakers and mentors. Their classes cover the fundamentals of writing for the screen and include many opportunities for guests to engage in hands-on workshops or long-form lectures.

• Working with the Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP), an initiative of Northwestern University that provides a high-quality liberal arts education to incarcerated students. WGF virtually connected WGA members with their students who are currently incarcerated. Our partnership with NPEP has continued to expand, most recently with the creation of the Justice-Impacted Writing Project, a fellowship for aspiring writers who are currently incarcerated.

• Co-organizing workshops and speaking opportunities with The Art of Cinema Excellence (ACEX) Foundation and The Hivemind Unified. Both organizations connect emerging talent with resources in the field of entertainment.

In-Person Events

Beyond Words 2024 - Hosted at the Writers Guild Theater in February, this annual event highlighted the 2024 Writers Guild Award screenplay nominees with back-to-back Adapted Screenplay and Original Screenplay panels. Beyond Words 2024 was a sold-out show with 468 tickets reserved. Listen to the audio recording here.

Sublime Primetime 2024 - Hosted at the Writers Guild Theater in August, this annual event celebrated the Emmy-Nominated writers for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series and Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series. Sublime Primetime 2024 was a sold-out show with 556 tickets reserved. Listen to the audio recording here.

Two Write-a-Thons! - The first two WGF Write-A-Thons since 2019, more than 140 writers joined us in June and September at the Shavelson-Webb Library for six-hour writing marathons. Library staff were on hand to help with script requests. Attendees found in each other a community of writers providing motivation and collaboration.

Partner Events - We hosted five different in-person events with partners including Business of Creating (Pitching Your Project, Writing for Streamers), Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting (Writing Women in Leadership Roles), Human Rights Watch (The Authoritarian Playbook), and Felicia Day (Turning Your Passion Into A Profession).

Altogether, 1,702 people RSVPed for these in-person events.

Virtual Events

In 2024, we hosted 15 virtual or livestreamed events. Events with recordings on our YouTube channel include: 

Altogether, 5,183 people RSVPed to attend our virtual events live, and the recordings of our 2024 events have nearly 12,000 views on our YouTube channel (as of the time of this report). Across our entire YouTube channel, our videos gained 179,381 views in 2024!

We also hosted three virtual Career Coaching Workshops with Entertainment Career Coach/Talent Agent Consultant/WGF Workshop Facilitator Jim Arnoff to teach writers how to successfully navigate their careers. 2024 workshops focused on the essentials of a powerful pitch, nailing the general meeting, and career reinvention. In October, we partnered with Stacey Simmons, PhD for a virtual workshop on writing better female characters with The Queen’s Path.

Other virtual event partners in 2024 included Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting (Writing Scientific Women in TV and Film) and Storyline Partners (Challenging Anti-Immigrant Narratives, Trans Representation, Pregnancy & Abortion Storylines, Eco Activism Portrayals).

WGFestival 2024

On November 15th & 16th, we hosted an all-virtual WGFestival 2024. More than 300 people joined us from all over the globe for interactive workshops, inspiring conversations, and networking opportunities. The schedule included:

Collections

We had more than 4,000 visitors at the Shavelson-Webb Library this year. Visitors were primarily from Los Angeles, but we also had patrons visit from Australia, Brazil, China, Ecuador, France, Germany, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Ukraine, and more!

Patrons requested to read more than 2,042 scripts. The most popular Library reads of 2024 were:

We added over 900 items to the Library catalog in 2024.

In the Archive, we processed ten collections totaling 65 boxes of material in 2024. These collections include scripts and papers from John Sacret Young, the creator of China Beach and a longtime Writers Guild Foundation board member; the papers of Gabrielle Upton, a freelance TV and soap writer who worked from the 1950s to the 1980s; a collection of materials from George Sunga related to his work as a producer, production executive, and advocate for diversity within the industry; ephemera from Blue Andre, a prodigious TV movie producer whose collection includes dozens of production bibles, development material, scripts, unique research and interviews, letters, contracts, photos, and videos; and collections from Dick Chevillat, a writer for radio and early TV, Donald E. Stewart, a thriller and action feature writer, Lee Sheldon, a TV writer and game designer, Sam Bobrick, a comedy writer, and Tod Carroll, a comedy writer at National Lampoon.

Also processed was the second half of a collection from Joseph Dougherty containing extensive thirtysomething material and scripts for his produced and unproduced TV movies. (Interested in learning more about this collection? Check out our blog posts about processing Dougherty’s collection and his motivations for donating, written by Archive Intern Shannon Muir Broden.)

Last spring, our library team also conducted a big solicitation project asking for donations of outlines, note cards, treatments, pitch documents, and other script development materials. These items are essential to emerging writers learning the process of screenwriting. Donated materials included:

Interested in donating scripts, development materials, or archival ephemera? Please send us an email!

Events and Outreach

Tours and Research

Throughout the year, the WGF Library and Archive team assists historians, writers, and academics with research questions surrounding our collections. A few research requests we supported in 2024 include:

• A PhD. Candidate writing about broadcast TV horror, relying on our large collection of material from the TV show The Munsters from the writer Norman Liebmann.

• An Australian journalist detailing the history of the King Brothers who made movies in the 1950s and 1960s and employed many Blacklisted writers.

• A UCLA researcher inquiring about WGA contracts in the 1950s and 1960s and how the 1960 strike may have affected Arthur MIller’s work on The Misfits.

• A journalist who was writing about a 1960s TV show THE C.A.T. reviewing our collection of press releases and press meeting notes from that show.

• An Australian Ph.D. candidate inquiring about documentation showing the creative relationship between screenwriter Jean Rouverol Butler and director Robert Aldrich.

• A researcher writing a biography of detective novelist and onetime screenwriter Dorothy B. Hughes.

• A film critic writing a book about All the President’s Men.

• Mel Shavelson’s granddaughter and her family, who reviewed hundreds of photos from Mel’s life.

All statistics are from January 1, 2024 to December 31, 2024. To see past impact reports, click the links below: