2021 Winner
Munch
Erin Muroski
Erin Muroski is a comedy writer and actor who prefers hurricanes to earthquakes (she’s from Orlando, but currently lives in LA). She writes about real, multifaceted women who try really hard to keep it together, but end up screwing it up in some way… just like her!
As a performer, she’s appeared on sitcoms, in national commercials, at San Francisco Sketch Fest two years running and was one of the leads in an uber religious romantic comedy that made her Catholic mother very happy called In-Lawfully Yours (available on Amazon & iTunes). She has taught and performed improv for over a decade and has her own podcast about the Bachelor franchise (so she is officially an Angeleno now.)
As a writer, won “Best Original Comedy Pilot” for her pilot Level Up at the UCLA Screenwriting Contest and won the PAGE International Screenwriting Award for “Best Comedy Pilot Script” for her script Game, based on her years of experience as a dating coach. She’s a two-time finalist at the Austin Film Festival and was chosen as a fellow by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer in “Imagine Impact Content Accelerator Program.” Her latest pilot Munch won first place in the Script Pipeline 2021 TV Writing contest. Erin is currently shopping her holiday feature Dumped on Christmas with Kimberly Montini at Cranium Entertainment.
Runner-up
Queens of Chocolate City
Donald Jolly
LA-based playwright & screenwriter Donald Jolly is a recent graduate of the inaugural class of the Writers Guild Foundation – Writers Access Support Staff Training Program, but a not-so-recent graduate of Dartmouth (1st-generation college grad) and USC School of Dramatic Arts (MFA, Dramatic Writing). Jolly’s character-driven dramas & dramedies about LGBTQ+ people of color draw inspiration from his youth as a queer child of divorce in inner-city DC during the Chocolate City days — a child raised in the world of the Black Church and respectability politics but saved by the soul-stirring styles and talents of Tina Turner, the yellowing pages of outdated World Book Encyclopedias, and Dorothy and her friends easin’ on down the road in the merry old land of Oz.
Before sashaying over to TV writing, Jolly first shantay-ed onto the LA theatre scene with the 2011 world premiere of his play bonded at Playwrights’ Arena/The Los Angeles Theatre Center (LATC). This historical drama — about same-sex romance in the antebellum South — won the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Playwriting Competition for LGBT Historical Plays, and was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Los Angeles Theatre and a LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award for Best Playwriting. After that, the Watts Village Theatre Company commissioned Jolly to write Riot/Rebellion. The 2015 immersive ensemble-driven docudrama about the 1965 civil unrest in LA’s Watts neighborhood earned a “GO!” in LA Weekly. In 2018, D’s play Baby Eyes premiered at Playwrights’ Arena at Atwater Village Theatre (Top 10 Recommendation by Stage Raw). Jolly’s plays have also been developed at The Warehouse Theatre, Celebration Theatre, The Vagrancy, EST/LA, and Company of Angels. Jolly is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America, an Associate Artist with Playwrights’ Arena, an alum of Center Theatre Group’s L.A. Writers Workshop, and an alum of the Geffen Playhouse Writers’ Room. D’s pronouns are he/him/his or they/them/theirs or D/D’em/D’s.
Donald is excited to begin a career in the world of episodic drama and hopes to get repped and staffed in the not-too-distant future. For Donald’s latest happenings, visit d-jolly.net or follow @JollyDramatist on Twitter.
Finalists
Blood at the Root
LaDarrion Williams
Cheap Thrills!
Stuart Thomas
In Vitro Veritas
Catherine Loerke
Little Sweden
Sam Boyer
Palmer Island
Bianca J. Ursillo
Ponzi
Wigham Foothill
This is Not a Place
Kelsey Grace Pfeifer
Typecast
Will Lapp
Semifinalists
Always Blue
Taylor Coriell
Average-Looking Cowboy
Sam Boyer
Bastards
Erin Muroski
Be Here Now
Katie Micay
Black Hatters
Adam Toltzis
Blood at the Root
LaDarrion Williams
Cheap Thrills!
Stuart Thomas
Holy Karan
Karan Batta & Saeed Crumpler
Human Resources
R.L. Hooker
In Vitro Veritas
Catherine Loerke
Leatherette
Michael KY. Yip
Lebensborn
Karen McDermott
Little Sweden
Sam Boyer
Mask4Masc
Roosevelt Brown
Munch
Erin Muroski
Nip + Suck
Judd Schlossberg
Palmer Island
Bianca J. Ursillo
Ponzi
Wigham Foothill
Queens of Chocolate City
Donald Jolly
This is Not a Place
Kelsey Grace Pfeifer
Thunder Buns
Micah Goldman & Griff Kohout
Typecast
Will Lapp
Quarterfinalists
100% Natural
Robin Rose Singer
Always Blue
Taylor Coriell
American Easy
Judd Schlossberg
Average-Looking Cowboy
Sam Boyer
Baby Abby Fell Down The Well
Lilah Taber
Baghdad By the Bay
Michael Weinreb
Bastards
Erin Muroski
Be Here Now
Katie Micay
Black Hatters
Adam Toltzis
Blood at the Root
LaDarrion Williams
Blood Bonds
Ashley Bower
Cheap Thrills!
Stuart Thomas
Clarke
Ellen Tremiti
Complicated White Man
Aaron Mobley
Concrete
Greer Ellison
Cosmic Janet
Jessie Stegner
Countertenor
Xavier Rogers
Cruddy
John Biggers
Curses!
Tulica Singh
Dale Farm
Dorie Chevlen
Detail Woman
Patricia Lundy
Dicks
Cristi Rumpza
Dreamers
LaDarrion Williams
En Tournant
Victoria DeMartin
Founders
Marisa Hardwicke
Game
Erin Muroski
Gumheels
Ellen Tremiti
Holy Karan
Karan Batta & Saeed Crumpler
Human Resources
R.L. Hooker
In Vitro Veritas
Catherine Loerke
Leatherette
Michael KY. Yip
Lebensborn
Karen McDermott
Little Sweden
Sam Boyer
Mask4Masc
Roosevelt Brown
Master-Mime
Samuel Ashurov & Raza Rizvi
Munch
Erin Muroski
Nip + Suck
Judd Schlossberg
Palmer Island
Bianca J. Ursillo
Ponzi
Wigham Foothill
Pre-Cancelled
Vivien Jastrzebski & Paul Travisano
Puppet Me
Julie Cavaliere
Queens of Chocolate City
Donald Jolly
Salvador Dolly
Brandon Burkhart
Softies
Kyle Gillis
Temp World
Jondaniel Cornett & Jonathan Frey
The Immortal Game
Zimran Jacob
The New Era
Drew Vollmer
The Stork
Rob Maza
The Taking of Lincoln Hospital
Karina Hurtado-Ocampo
This is Not a Place
Kelsey Grace Pfeifer
Thunder Buns
Micah Goldman & Griff Kohout
Typecast
Will Lapp
Unseen
Anthony Grippa & Matthew Tyler
Week End Tonight
Lindsay Nyman
White Collar Wives Club
Bry Larrea
Finalists – July 10th
Winner – July 24th