Winner: Julia Brownell
Smart Cookie
Julia Brownell is an Emmy-nominated TV writer, screenwriter, and playwright. She’s written on television shows such as This is Us, Parenthood, The Path, Smash, and Hung. Julia’s play All-American premiered Off-Broadway produced by Lincoln Center/LCT3 and has been produced across the country. Her play Smart Cookie won the Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Award and was produced by the Alliance Theatre in 2009. She’s a mom of two boys and a competitive marathon runner.
Randall Colburn
Lamp and Moth
Mr. Colburn is an editor at Entertainment Weekly. As a widely produced writer, he has covered nearly every corner of media/pop culture space at pubs like EW, The AV Club, The Guardian, and has a popular podcast. Past work includes productions with Victory Gardens Theater, InFusion Theatre Company, Brain Surgeon Theater, The Mammals Theatre Company, Dream Theatre Company and The Right Brain Project, who dedicated their 2010 season to his work. His play, Verse Chorus Verse, received its Off-Broadway premiere with Barefoot Theatre Company after a successful run with Chicago's Tympanic Theatre Company spring 2011. He is the recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Illinois Arts Council and a former finalist for the 2011 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the Alliance’s 2009 Kendeda Graduate Playwright Competition and the 2009 New York Summer Play Fest. Colburn has also been commissioned by InFusion Theatre Company and has developed plays with companies including the Public Theatre, the Alliance Theatre, Stage Left Theatre Company and Chicago Dramatists, where he is also a resident playwright. Colburn was recently named "One to Watch" by the Chicago Reader. He received his MFA in Playwriting from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.
Zayd Dohrn
Sick
Zayd Ayers Dohrn is an award-winning writer whose plays have premiered off-Broadway, across the country, and internationally, including at Playwrights Horizons, the Vineyard Theatre, Naked Angels, Steppenwolf, and many others. Honors include the Horton Foote New American Play Prize, the Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, the Kennedy Center’s Jean Kennedy Smith Award, the Sky Cooper American Playwriting Prize, Theatre Master’s Visionary Playwright Award, and Lincoln Center’s Lecomte du Nouy Prize. Zayd is also the creator, writer, and host of the narrative podcast Mother Country Radicals, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2022 and won the award for “Best Audio Storytelling.” He is currently a Professor at Northwestern University and Director of the MFA in Writing for the Screen + Stage.
Sarah Gubbins
Fair Use
Sarah wrote the feature Shirley directed by Josephine Decker which premiered at Sundance. Her television work includes being the Co-Creator, Writer and Executive Producer of I Love Dick for Amazon, a Co-Executive Producer on the FX television show Better Things season three, and a Co-Executive Producer on the Hulu limited series, Pam & Tommy for which she received Emmy, PGA, and WGA nominations. She is currently developing a feature with Working Title and a limited series based on Joan Didion’s The White Album.
