Congratulations to Three Fellowship Winners!

We have selected Daryl Bright Clay, Tre Simms, and Gaelyn D. Smith, three deserving winners of the $2500 Fellowship for African-American Perspective, who will start their Basic Training on Saturday, March 9th.  Each will develop their project from idea through three drafts over the 10-week process.

–Originally hailing from the DC-Metropolitan area, Daryl Bright Clay is a Brooklyn based filmmaker & performing artist whose work aims to encourage self-love, acknowledge self-hate, and find connection in the paradox of it all; moreover, she is an alumni of Duke Ellington program of the Arts, Carnegie Mellon’s program of Drama, and the Royal Welsh program of Music & Drama, and is currently producing a comedic web-series for an up and coming filmmaker, Saran Bakari while completing post-production on a short film directed by acclaimed artist, Victoria Pedretti.

–Born in Dayton, Ohio, and now residing in Los Angeles, Tre Simms has a number of years of experience as a stagehand under IATSE, has worked as an Executive Assistant with HUE You Know as an Executive Assistant, an Associate Producer in the Commercial/Documentary spaces, and is now a staff member for The Art Director’s Guild; coordinating meetings and events at the Guild.

—Gaelyn D. Smith is an actor, writer, and content creator with a B.F.A. in Acting and an M.A. in Television, Radio, and Film from Syracuse University whose work expands and redefines the narrative of Black America for the forward progress of her people.

As always, the winners were evaluated on a combination of factors, including artistic background, the unique quality and perspective of their answers within their application responses and commentary, and the clarity of conceptual distinctions.  Once the larger field was narrowed down based on the caliber of applications, the winners were selected from the smaller group of highly ranked writers based on the viability and entertainment potential of the project ideas.  In effect, in each Fellowship category the overall quality of application answers will illustrate the writer’s potential to execute the writing quality of their project.

We’re very happy to support the creative goals of these three winners as they become active alumni in our Writers Boot Camp community!