MEET OUR 2023 TV CONTEST DIVISION WINNERS

We’re thrilled to introduce our TV contest division winners in the 2023 TV Fellowship competition. Each of these writers placed first in their respective divisions of Original Comedy, Original Drama, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Congratulations to them all!

(pictured above, left to right: Annie C. Wright, Alex Hanno, and Alex Blumberg)

Annie C. Wright – Original Comedy Division Winner / TV Fellowship Winner

In Annie C. Wright’s Original Comedy Division and TV Fellowship winning TV pilot, BYE LINES, after years of people-pleasing at her own expense, Mel decides to live vicariously through her dying clients by offering to deliver their parting words to all the people who ever wronged them.

Annie C. Wright is a comedy writer, a sometimes director, and a card-carrying member of the Dramatists Guild of America who’s currently serving as the Comedy Fellow in the 2023 FOX Writers Incubator!

Annie has a degree in English that she’ll be paying off for the foreseeable future, and has sharpened her TV writing chops at UCLA Extension, UCB, and the Second City. Her original pilot, BUDS, based on her experience working in healthcare, was selected for the second round of the Sundance Episodic Lab and was nominated for a Jury Award at the Austin Film Festival. She’s also a three-time Telly Award winning content creative who may have written some of the streaming ads you’ve opted to skip!

Alex Hanno – Original Drama Division Winner

In Alex Hanno’s Original Drama Division winning TV pilot, SEABROOK, three generations of hard-nosed New England women go to war with a dangerous business tycoon in order to keep their small-town fixture – a fried seafood restaurant – up and running. However, overcoming their dysfunctional nature and working together as a family proves to be as much of a challenge as going toe to toe with the Boston Mafia itself.

Alex Hanno is the writer/director behind the upcoming apocalyptic thriller A SOCIAL CONTRACT starring Sean Astin, the romantic dramedy ELEPHANTS, which is “Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes, and the Catalyst Content Festival award winning TV show SERVED.

His latest projects, the New England drama SEABROOK and the Welsh dramedy A SANCTUARY FOR WATER VOLES have placed in the likes of ISA’s Screenwriting Fellowship, Final Draft’s Big Break Screenwriting Contest, Scriptapalooza, and the Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition. He’s also created numerous short films, including the Sunscreen Film Festival selection LUNACY, the Cardiff Film Festival selection THE CHAMELEON, and the DTLA Film Festival selection BONUS TIME, as well as a piece for NBC’s Diversity Showcase.

In addition to co-owning his production company, The Chameleon Effect, with creative partner Luca Malacrino, Alex has also worked in development for the likes of Broad Green Pictures and VMI Worldwide, alongside co-managing Deadline Junkies, a professional screenwriting organization based in Los Angeles, California.

Alex Blumberg – Original Sci-Fi/Fantasy Division Winner

In Alex Blumberg’s Original Sci-Fi/Fantasy Division winning TV pilot, KOSMOS, a team of freethinking Soviet rocket scientists-turned-UFOlogists must outwit the KGB, the military, and a corrupt psychiatrist after receiving an alien transmission warning of an imminent nuclear apocalypse.

Alex Blumberg is an award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker, whose screenplays and fiction writing are all inspired by real history, people, and events. He’s written narration for Oscar-winner Helen Mirren, optioned an original TV pilot, and has three scripts on the Coverfly Red List (top 1% of scripts on the site).

Alex’s writing has won top honors in the Creative Screenwriting Unique Voices competition (Back Fires), Sedona International Film Festival (Sister & Back Fires), and the CineStory TV Fellowship Sci-Fi Division (Kosmos). He’s reached the Finalist rounds in prestigious competitions including Final Draft Big Break, ScreenCraft, StoryPros, and Fresh Voices – with additional placements in Script Pipeline, PAGE Awards, Cinequest Film & VR Festival, Austin Film Festival, Mammoth Lakes Film Festival, and Atlanta Film Festival.

After earning a B.F.A. in film production from N.Y.U. Tisch, Alex spent three years at Billboard in New York City as a video director and editor, working with artists like Bruno Mars, Regina Spektor, Ellie Goulding, and Sara Bareilles.

He spent his next chapter in Europe, working as a Prague-based video journalist with a focus on Eastern bloc nations like Ukraine, Romania, and Moldova. As the son of a Latvian immigrant, the expat era of Alex’s career reconnected him to his eastern European roots, while fueling a fascination with societies in transition and lives caught in the cross-currents of historical forces. While on staff at Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, Alex directed the award-winning 2016 documentary short Generation Emigration, chronicling mass youth migration from the post-Soviet republic of Moldova.

Alex works by day for Meta as the supervising editor for their in-house video production studio. His second documentary feature as a writer is currently in post-production. Other projects in the pipeline include a fiction podcast adaptation of his prison firefighter drama Back Fires, featuring a voice cast with speaking roles in major studio films (Baby Driver, Babylon), and a historical fantasy novel exploring the pagan folklore and Christian conquest of medieval Latvia. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Emily, a UX designer for YouTube, their cat Olga, and their soon-to-arrive first child.