Congratulations to Julie Harkness Arnold, Stacie Craig and Khanisha Foster for their Fellowship awards and recent start of Basic Training on March 7th.

–Julie Harkness Arnold is an alumnus of Writers Boot Camp.  An Indianapolis native in LA by way of Broadway, Julie was the the third African American Radio City Rockette and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Point Park University.  She spent the quarantine under contract developing shows for Amazon, OWN and Netflix.  She also assisted her husband in creating Nickelodeon’s “That Girl Lay Lay, now in its second season. Julie’s goals are to continue to grow as a television development exec., with the mission of creating diversity-driven content that is enriching, thrilling and stimulating.  Her TV drama pilot, Awaken, depicts five teen spy sleeper agents involved in a racially motivated kidnapping.

–Khanisha Foster is a Fox Fellow, originally from Chicago, now living in LA, whose work as an artist focuses on where cultures collide.  Khanisha’s project is an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo.  Dumas was a Black man with an impressive afro, who wrote stories about his Black father, and yet those stories were whitewashed in television and film.  Her version is a contemporary, one-hour dramatic television series that returns a Black man to the center of the story.

–Stacie Craig’s half-hour comedy pilot Straight A-Holes is about two inner city LA teachers fallen on hard times who plagiarize a student’s screenplay.  Due to her collaboration with her project partner, Kenny Tenny, we extended an additional full scholarship for him to participate with her in Basic Training. A single mother, Stacie has an MFA in playwriting and was a Nickelodeon Writing Fellow 2009-10.  She currently teaches drama at an East Los Angeles high program, and has always dreamed of writing television that reflects stories about her life and her community.

We look forward to supporting these dynamic artists and their writing process with us. We appreciate the efforts and applications of all the candidates, and the staff has already followed up with brief notes about each writer’s application answers and the potential of their project ideas!