News & Events

Over the summer, our dedicated jury read and re-read the 124 submissions we received for our 2012 Screenplay Competition, with each of them noting the across-the-board excellence of this year's screenplays. We thank everyone who applied to our competition this year!

This year's eight finalists will join us in Vancouver in November 2012 for our week-long Fall Workshop. During the Workshop, each writer will be matched with an experienced screenwriting advisor for intensive one-on-one mentoring sessions.

WINNERS:

Andrea Carlson and Sheena Gordon, Vancouver, BC Screenplay: LADIES NIGHT

On the coldest night of the year, four nerdy girls have one shot at sex, drugs and high school glory.

Andrea Carlson is a film, television and literary writer, whose creative work has been published by Freaky Fountain Press, Golden Taffy and Outside the Lines Publications. Her co-written screenplay, Mouse, was one of the top twenty horror finalists in the Page Screenwriting Awards. She is the producer of such short films as The Babysitter and Cured, and has composed original music for stage and screen. She is currently filming Andrew Plimpton: Boy Wizard, a comedy webseries (with wands!).

Sheena Gordon is a film, television and literary writer. She has written for film for the past four years, including comedy, horror and dramatic features and shorts. She co-wrote Projections, winner of the Saskatchewan Motion Picture Industry Association award for Best Emerging Artist, as well as Enlightenment in a Small Town which was nominated for Best of Saskatchewan and Best Experimental at the Yorkton Film Festival.



Carla Custance, Ottawa, ON Screenplay: RESURRECTING JANE DOE

When a quirky mortician identifies a Jane Doe, he tells her family a tall tale about her to help them grieve and falls in love with her sister. Things get complicated when he uncovers Jane's real story - if he can't keep it under wraps, it'll break their hearts and end the only real relationship he's ever had.

Carla Custance, a graduate of the Algonquin College scriptwriting program, is currently completing a low residency Master of Fine Arts in screenwriting at Spalding University. She writes screenplays and T.V. scripts from Ottawa, where she resides with her husband and two dogs.

Amanda Darling, Sudbury, ON Screenplay: CHILDREN OF HONOUR

When her older sister is murdered for dishonoring her Muslim family, seventeen-year-old Afsaneh must honor her sister's dying wish and keep her younger brothers together as a family.

Amanda Darling is both a diligent writer and a resigned packrat. Her many early projects are now growing mould in her basement, making her one of the few people who secretly hopes her house floods. She wrote the first draft of Children of Honour as an online student of the UCLA professional program in screenwriting.



Geoff Inverarity, Vancouver, BC Screenplay: CHANGE OF OCCUPATION

A sleazy real estate salesman finds a strange form of redemption when his backyard is transformed into a surreal battleground after a dying native man is told by a talking coyote that the lawn is a piece of sacred territory.

One of the original founders of the Gulf Islands Film and Television School, Geoff Inverarity has been a reader for Telefilm Canada and has won awards for his work in poetry, creative non-fiction, and screenplay. He is a graduate of Aberdeen University, Queen's University, and the University of British Columbia, where he received and M.F.A. in creative writing. His short screenplay Move Out Clean was the winning project pitched at the MPPIA Short Film Competition at the 2009 Whistler Film Festival, and his feature screenplay Uncanny was the First Place Winner in the Writers' Place 2010 screenplay Contest.



Shane Laporte, Surrey, BC Screenplay: SOMETHING ELSE

A married couple who have been together since they were kids, decide to separate and find themselves thrust into the dating scene and the single life for the first time.

Shane Laporte graduated from Vancouver Film School's Writing Program in 2001. Shane was previously accepted as a Praxis Fellow in 1995 for his screenplay After My Funeral, and again in 2002 for his screenplay Signals Crossed, which was also accepted into the 2003 Summer Readings Workshop. Also a playwright, Shane has been a participant in the Writer's Block program at Playwright's Theatre Centre in Vancouver, and a past Artist In Residence with the Virtual Stage theatre company.



Steven Mayoff, Ellersie, PE Screenplay: FATTED CALF BLUES

A lonely hitchhiker, desperate to reconcile with her father who suffers from dementia, kidnaps a mysterious healer from a remote truck stop, believing he is her father's only hope.

Steven Mayoff was born and raised in Montreal, lived in Toronto for 17 years and has made Prince Edward Island his home since 2001. He writes full time and his fiction and poetry have appeared in journals across Canada and the USA, as well as in Ireland, Algeria and France. His story collection, Fatted Calf Blues, was published by Turnstone Press in 2009 and praised by the Globe & Mail as showing "a strong imagination at work." It won the 2010 PEI Book Award for Fiction, was short-listed for a 2010 ReLit Award and was a Top 5 Finalist in the 2011 CBC Cross-Country Bookshelf.



Jane Meikle, Victoria, BC Screenplay: HALF BREED: LEGEND OF THE COYOTE

A young woman must kill or be killed when she is exiled from her small community on the lawless Western frontier following an inadvertent murder.

Jane Meikle is an award-winning writer with a background in Canadian national television. She was the face of Canada-wide horror channel Scream from 2001 to 2004, after which she completed the Canadian Film Centre's Director's Lab. Jane was Film Department Head at SAE Institute Dubai from 2009-2011, and has continued to write for entertainment groups such as Comedy Central Studios Arabia. She is currently developing a feature project with Imagenation Abu Dhabi and collaborating on projects with writing partners in the United States and England. She is a graduate of McGill University.



Steven Owad, Calgary, AB Screenplay: LOVE IN THE AGE OF TERROR

A violent hate crime against a Muslim youth ignites conflict in a small Montana community.

Steven Owad's published crime novels include Hard Currency (Five Star First Edition Mystery) as well as Bodycheck and Brother's Keeper (Napoleon and Co.). Steven has also published short stories and poetry in U.S. and Canadian literary magazines. His stage plays have been developed through the Alberta Playwrights Network and Davenport Theatricals (New York), and his first feature-film screenplay, Sons of the Fathers, won the 2011 Alberta Screenwriters Initiative.

SEMI-FINALISTS:

Writers of semi-finalist scripts will receive a detailed reader's report courtesy of Praxis' Script Analysis service.

Penny Frazier, HOCKEY NIGHT IN CROMDALE

Daniel Hogg, SIX CHAMBER HEART

Mandy Playdon, CHURCHES ON SINNERS HILL

HONOURABLE MENTIONS:

Writers of scripts awarded an Honorable Mention will receive a personal letter including comments from the jury members on their screenplay.

Richard Bell, BROTHERHOOD

Selina Chignall, BURDENED WITH BLOODSHED

Vanessa Esteves, THE ASSEMBLY ACCOUNT

Breon Halling and Stephen Hatcher, FINGER PAINTING WITH KENT FINGER

Hamilton Hollands, DRAKULA

Joel Thomas Hynes, DRY SWALLOW

Lea Nakonechny, RAVENSCRAG ROAD

Andrea Nettleton, LOST IN BLOOM

Marly Reed, MIMI & ME

Kyle Rideout and Josh Epstein, EADWEARD

Frank Schlapansky, THE MIRROR ROOM

Vernon J. Vassell, THE OM SEED

Daniel Zane Nammour, THE MAZE