MEET OUR 2026 TV CONTEST DIVISION WINNERS

We’re thrilled to introduce our TV Contest division winners of the 2026 TV Retreat & Fellowship competition. These writers placed first in their respective divisions of Original Comedy, Original Drama, and Original Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Congratulations to them all!

(Pictured above, from left to right: Lizzie Logan, Original Comedy Division winner & TV Fellowship winner; Matilda Corley Schulman, Original Drama Division winner; and Amanda Kowalski, Original Sci-Fi/Fantasy Division winner.)

Lizzie Logan – Original Comedy Division Winner & TV Fellowship Winner

In Lizzie Logan’s Original Comedy Division winning TV pilot, BAKER HIGH, during her first week of high school, brilliant but awkward Sari Lockwood pisses off the school mean girl, starts an investigation into drug test tampering on the baseball team, launches a detective business, gets on the principal’s watch list, and receives threatening anonymous notes in her locker. Coulda gone worse.

Lizzie Logan is an entertainment writer by day (Vulture, Glamour, Flood magazine, Bustle, HBO’s WHAT HAPPENED, BRITTANY MURPHY?) and a humor writer by night (McSweeney’s, The Onion, The New Yorker, Shouts and Murmurs, Reductress), whose iHeart Media podcast, HOAX!, recently wrapped its first season (available wherever you get your podcasts).

Raised in San Francisco, Lizzie was an only child of divorce whose hours spent immobile on the couch watching TBS often prompted her mother to say, “You better end up working in television to make all this worth it.” Accepting the challenge, Lizzie graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Dramatic Writing, winning the department award for undergraduate half-hour comedies and delivering the Tisch Salute speech.

She spent the next ten years nurturing her love of comedy as a student at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and a writer/performer on sketch and improv teams. She also wrote and directed a micro-budget romantic comedy feature, PEOPLE PEOPLE, about an agoraphobic YouTube star, which premiered at the Ashland Independent Film Festival and won the Best Narrative Feature prize at the deadCenter Film Festival. She got her first official TV job as an executive assistant on Netflix’s THE BREAK WITH MICHELLE WOLF, and the experience confirmed that making great television for funny women is what she wants to do forever, or for as long as television is a thing.

Lizzie landed in Los Angeles three years ago and recently developed a female buddy comedy feature, SPIT SISTERS, for her former THE BREAK boss, Dan Powell of Irony Point. She is currently taking classes at the Groundlings School and can be found most days writing a pilot about a complicated woman who gets the guy in the end anyway. She is represented by Katie Newman at 3Arts.

Matilda Corley Schulman – Original Drama Division Winner

Matilda Corley Schulman’s Original Drama Division winning TV pilot, MURDER BALLADS & LOVE SONGS, in 1910, when her horse is stolen, Victoria “Vic” Martinez takes her band of makeshift bounty hunters down from Montana to the territory of New Mexico in order to get back what’s been stolen and face the one man she thought she would never have to survive again.

Matilda Corley Schulman is a Los Angeles-based writer, actor, and former NCAA Division I equestrian (yes, she’s a horse girl) — who loves telling stories that are a blend of rebellion, heartbreak, and just a touch of magic—stories that help us all feel a little less alone.

Currently her feature film LARK, is set to be directed by Finola Hughes and produced by Fallen Angel Productions. Her short HUNGER PAINS (AFI DWW 25/26 Official Finalist) is to be directed by Tessa Slovis this spring. Her indie romance MIRI & GAV is currently under option and searching for final funding.

She holds a BA from UC Berkeley (after transferring from Oklahoma State University) and holds an MFA from USC. Her plays, pilots, and features have been recognized by the O’Neill, Mazumdar, Stowe Story Labs, Cinestory, Austin Film Festival, Coverfly, Stage 32, ScreenCraft and more.

She was named to the Coverfly x Tracking Board The Next List 2024.

Her pilot BLOODY NOSES, based on her O’Neill and Mazumdar Semifinalist play of the same name (world premiere at USC in April 2023 under the direction of David Warshofsky), was a participant in the 2024 Stowe Story Labs Connemara Writers Retreat and a Semifinalist for Austin Film Festival’s AMC Pilot Award 2025.

As an assistant director and dramaturge she has worked for Kate Burton, David Warshofsky, and Fran de Leon. And, you guessed it, if she’s not holed up in a coffee shop writing or memorizing lines, you can be sure to find her on the back of a horse.

Amanda Kowalski – Original Sci-Fi/Fantasy Division Winner

In Amanda Kowalski’s Original Sci-Fi/Fantasy Division winning TV pilot, DISPLACED, when people across the globe begin switching places at random, a brilliant but grieving mathematician is called up to decipher the cause while reconciling with her stormy teenage daughter.

Over her writing career, Amanda Kowalski has overlapped work as a science & tech ghostwriter for well-known companies, a travel writer and photographer, and a novelist. She’s also laboured her love of words as an ESL teacher and marketing exec, and held several positions for international film festivals. Amanda grew up in Michigan’s fields, water, and forests, and studied music, creative writing, and languages in Chicago, Budapest, and Madrid, earning a B.A. from North Park University.

In 2026, her stories have been featured on the Blacklist (THIS IS REAL), achieved a CineStory TV Fellowship Sci-Fi/Fantasy Division win (DISPLACED), and an AFF-Stowe Fellowship Finalist placement (GLOSSED OVER). In 2025, her grounded sci-fi screenplays achieved an Austin Film Festival Script Competition Finalist placement (DISPLACED), two AFF Semifinalist placements across four categories (THIS IS REAL, WISDOM OF A WISH), a PAGE win (THIS IS REAL), and a CineStory Feature Fellowship Finalist placement (RED RAIN). Amanda’s stories focus on themes that evoke reflection on sociological issues through intricate characters in grounded worlds, and heightened, often satirical, circumstances.

She has traveled through 70+ countries and lived in six. After seven years in Spain, she speaks fluent Spanish, as well as a notably low level of her husband’s native language, Hungarian. Amanda is also a passionate photographer, bonfire pit and smores enthusiast, insatiable bibliophile, and outdoors adventurer with her young family.