Kellen Hertz, M.A. '02

Alumna Kellen Hertz was recently accepted into The Writers Lab. Funded by Meryl Streep, The Writers Lab is a program that attempts to combat the sexism and ageism issues in Hollywood. The lab gives 12 female screenwriters over 40 years old the opportunity to improve their submitted scripts on a narrative and commercial level by working with eight mentors, including a UCLA alumna and former administrator.

The mentors, who are a mix of female screenwriters and producers, will meet one-on-one with Hertz and the other selected screenwriters at the lab in New York. The program is a collaborative effort between the New York Women in Film and Television, or NYWIFT, the IRIS film collective and the Writers Guild of America East.

For the lab, Hertz submitted her film script “Ashburn,” a romantic thriller set in Mexico that was inspired by Henry James’ “The Aspern Papers.”

Read more here.