Your Impact

What a year it’s been — and we’re only halfway through! 2025 has been busy here at the Writers Guild Foundation. Like the scripts on our library shelves, it’s been full of poignant stories too:

Raising funds for wildfire relief at a Wicked script breakdown…

A soap opera star donating her late husband’s special collection to the Archive…

An extensive outreach effort to find jobs for our new class of WASSTP graduates…

And, of course, our usual work supporting the screenwriting community.

This is all possible because of donors like you, so THANK YOU for your support! As an extra-special thanks, here’s an update on how your generosity has made an impact so far in 2025. 

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVE

Encouragement

Libraries aren’t just for research and reading — they’re centers for community. When writers first visit the Library, they’re often looking for more than just scripts. They’re looking for other writers. In an industry filled with all sorts of ups and downs, we could all use a little reminder that we’re not alone.

To help foster a better sense of community, this spring WGF Librarian Lauren O’Connor put a call out to our patrons and transformed a bulletin board in the library into the “Wall of Encouragement”, an interactive project where library visitors can write messages of inspiration and encouragement to each other.

The wall quickly ballooned to over 55 messages of inspiration. Add your own note next time you visit!

Scripts! Scripts! Scripts!

So far in 2025, patrons made more than 2,871 appointments to visit the Shavelson-Webb Library and requested to read more than 1,305 scripts. Some of the popular new film and TV scripts acquired this year include:

Our new lobby exhibit, “The Library Project: A History of Script Acquisitions in the WGF Library”, showcases several decades of script acquisition correspondence. The WGF Library obtains most of its scripts by writing directly to WGA members and asking them for materials. These documents shed light on that collection-building process.

Coinciding with the new exhibit, we put together our first-ever Library Wishlist. This wishlist highlights areas of the collection we're trying to build out. Already this year, the wishlist has helped us acquire scripts from Schitt’s Creek, Martin, Smash, In Living Color, Aah! Real Monsters, The New Mickey Mouse Club, and more.

Want to help us grow our collection? Check out the Library Wishlist here.

Making New Friends

During the first half of 2025, we’ve welcomed a few new friends to the Library and Archive. Check out their stories below!

A Very Special Collection

Black TV History and Other Tours

In February, we hosted a first-of-its-kind Black Script Tour in partnership with The HiveMind Unified. This sold-out tour showcased notable Black TV writers and their scripts in honor of Black History Month from Beulah, a radio show starring Hattie McDaniel (the very first to star a Black woman) to Roots to Living Single to Atlanta. Special Guest JonTerri Gadson joined to discuss her work writing on A Black Lady Sketch Show, The Upshaws, Everybody Still Hates Chris, and more.

We’ve also hosted a few other groups for library tours and events, including:

• Final Draft’s Big Break Screenwriting Contest winners

• Attendees of our January and June Write-A-Thon events and participants of our Veterans Writing Project

• Writers from the Korea Radio Promotion Association’s Broadcast Format Academy in South Korea

• Students from Ball State University, Chapman University, the University of Georgia, and the University of North Georgia

The Divine Miss M

Beyond the Shelves

Screenwriting education doesn’t just stop at our doors — the WGF Library and Archive team shares resources and expertise at outreach events year-round.

In partnership with Humanitas’ Industry 101 event series, WGF Archivist Hilary Swett spoke on “Unions 101”, a Zoom discussion on the history and current work of the Writers Guild of America. She was joined by WGAW staffers Cathy Genovese and Taraneh Mansouri, and WGF Director of Communications and Events Dustin Fleischmann moderated the conversation.

In April, Hilary also presented at the Society of California Archivists conference about her work on LA As Subject’s Archives At Risk Committee. The committee provides guidance to small archives that need help defining and moving forward on short- and medium-term goals.

In partnership with the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, WGF produced an oral history with Felicia Henderson, best known for developing the TV series Soul Food for Showtime (recording still being processed at time of this report). Oral histories are interviews with prominent writers that detail their life and career. Every story, from early childhood and breaking into the industry to favorite projects and writing process, is all told in their own words. View WGF’s collection of oral histories here.

Our Library and Archive team also hosts educational Zoom events:

Throughout the year, the WGF Library and Archive team assists historians, writers, and academics with research questions surrounding our collections. A few research requests we’ve supported so far in 2025 include:

• A documentary filmmaker researching Mel Shavelson and the making of his film Cast a Giant Shadow.

• An author writing about horror used our collection from screenwriter Bill Lancaster, who wrote an unused draft of Firestarter.

• A film historian researching silent film writer Jane Murfin, her early Screen Writers Guild involvement, and her credit for the 1932 film What Price Hollywood?

• A researcher seeking information about writing couples Michael and Fay Kanin, and Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon.

• An author using our collection of material from Gabrielle Upton for a book about a soap opera.

PROGRAMS

By the Numbers

Check out some impressive statistics from our community programs during the first half of 2025!

Year Two: The WGF Veterans Fellowship

Drastic changes in the industry over the last decade have made breaking in as a professional screenwriter more challenging than ever. To better serve our growing pool of talented Veterans Writing Project alumni, in 2024 WGF launched the Veterans Fellowship. This year, we hosted our second-ever cohort!

The fellowship’s mission is to provide educational resources, professional guidance, and career-building opportunities for Veterans Writing Project alumni who are on the threshold of breaking into the industry.

Six fellows were selected for the second-ever cohort: Addison Blu, Christopher Harris, LeVonda Lee, Corinthian Maldonado, RJ Palisoc, and Anthony Pittore.

Each fellow worked one-on-one with a showrunner-mentor who helped them polish their samples for staffing and make new connections in the industry: Hart Hanson (Bones), Kyle Harimoto (NCIS: Los Angeles), Stefani Robinson (Atlanta), Kira Snyder (The Handmaid’s Tale), Craig Sweeny (Watson), and David Weddle (For All Mankind). Fellowship Instructor Eli Edelson (Motherland: Fort Salem) hosted eight official workshops and weekly office hours.

The 2025 fellowship officially finished in May. We’re so excited to continue to support our fellows as they navigate the industry with their new skills!

Interested in hiring one of our fellows? Make a talent request here!

Welcoming the 2025 Cohorts

In the first half of 2025, we welcomed new cohorts of the Writers’ Access Support Staff Training Program and the Veterans Writing Project to the WGF community.

Inspiring Future Screenwriters

The Visiting Writers Program gives students firsthand insights into the craft, careers, and practices of the working writer in Hollywood through one-on-one visits between WGA writers and classrooms across the country. We’ve facilitated four of these educational discussions so far in 2025:

• Steve Blackman (The Umbrella Academy), Rick Cleveland (Insatiable), and Michael Colleary (Professionals) Zoomed with screenwriting students at Southern Oregon University, Western Colorado University, and Fitchburg State University, respectively.

• Port Allen High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana hosted A.C. Allen (S.W.A.T.) and Bernard Lechowick (Homefront) in person for a conversation with their art students.

EVENTS

So far in 2025, we’ve hosted 16 events. Altogether, 4,204 people RSVPed to attend our events live, and the recordings of our 2025 events have more than 17,100 views on our YouTube channel (as of June 1). Here are some of the highlights:

Wicked Wildfire Relief

WGF Career Coaching…Now Monthly!

Entertainment Career Coach/Talent Agent Consultant Jim Arnoff has been a long-time collaborator with the Foundation. Over the years, Jim has volunteered with WGF programs, hosted several WGF workshops, and has even coached WGF staff.

New this year, we’ve partnered with Jim to host career coaching workshops monthly. These immersive, interactive workshops help supercharge writers’ careers through one-on-one coaching, group coaching, networking, and resourcing — completely free of charge. We’re so happy to be strengthening this partnership.

So far this year, 590 people have RSVPed for these workshops.

Events in the Building

So far this year, we’ve hosted five educational events in person:

• An Inside the Writers Room with Ghosts in April. Showrunners Joe Port & Joe Wiseman joined members of their writing team, Talia Bernstein, Akilah Green, Sophia Lear, and Josh Malmuth for a conversation on how the writers approach character development, how they pitch jokes in the room, their individual experiences cracking episodes, how their room runs and more about their fourth season.

• Two Write-A-Thons, one in January and one in June. These quarterly events open up the Library for a six-hour writing sprint and a community of writers providing mutual motivation to brainstorm, write, revise, and finish that scripts. Complete with food, drinks, and a raffle, these Write-A-Thons are some of our most popular events.

• Two partner events with our friends at Business of Creating: From Script to Savings: Navigating the New World of Film and TV Tax Incentives in February and another, Press Start: Building a Career in Video Game Writing & Narrative Design, in April. These events are geared toward professionals looking for practical action steps to create, finance, market, sell, distribute, and pitch top-quality projects. Our video game panel was the most well-attended in-person event of the year so far with 241 RSVPs.

Missed it Live? Watch it on YouTube!

We record a majority of our events and post their recordings on YouTube to help make our screenwriting resources as accessible as possible. The 2025 recordings on our YouTube channel include:

All statistics are from January 1, 2025 to June 30, 2025. To see past impact reports, click the links below: