Brianne Christopher
Groveland, MA
Graduated January 2015
BRIANNE CHRISTOPHER grew up around the U.S., specifically New Jersey, California, and Massachusetts. Her works include screenplays ABORT! and Two Princes, television pilots Cult of Hal and The Reset, and stage play The Dinner List. Her ten-minute play Big Brother was a KCACTF Regional Finalist in 2017. She writes mostly comedy and horror, and finds inspiration where the two intersect. She recently completed the first draft of a science fiction novel.
Fabiola R. Decius
Boston, MA
Graduated June 2015
FABIOLA R. DECIUS graduated from Lesley’s MFA program for Writing for Stage and Screen June 2015. Fabiola R. Decius’ plays include “Haiti Chérie”, “Final Verdict”, “In Sync”, “Ice Cream Bucket List”, “Date Night Surprise”, “Chicksmas”, “Draped in History”, “Free Before Eleven”, “Consent”, “Black Jesus”, “Bus Stop”, MAN OF THE HOUSE, and FIGHTING FORGIVENESS, which have been produced and/or developed at Bryn Mawr College, Lesley University, the Boston Public Library, Our Voices Festival, Fade to Black Festival, the Roxbury Repertory Theater, Controlled Kaos Productions, the Office of War Information (Bureau of Theater), Company One Theatre, the Boston Theater Marathon, the Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theatres, and the Boston Neighborhood Network channel. Fabiola was a Creative City grant recipient through the New England Foundation for the Arts in 2018, and founded Teens WRITE (Writing, Reading, and Investigating Theater Everywhere), which is a program for teenagers to write, revise, cast, direct, and produce original plays culminating in a Ten-Minute Play Festival. She is also currently a high school theater arts educator in the city of Boston. Fabiola graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a Bachelor of Arts, and received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Lesley University in Stage and Screen Writing.
Cheryl Eagan-Donovan
Winchester, MA
Graduated January 2012
CHERYL EAGAN-DONOVAN (M.F.A.) is an award-winning writer, director, and producer whose documentary Nothing Is Truer than Truth premiered on Hulu in 2019, is currently available on Amazon Prime in the U.S. and Canada, and aired on SkyArts TV in the U.K. last month under the new title Shakespeare: The Man Behind the Name. Her debut documentary All Kindsa Girls screened at film festivals and art house theaters in London, Toronto and throughout the U.S. She is a frequent lecturer at conferences and has taught writing, film, and literature at Lesley University, Northeastern University, Lasell University, and Grub Street Center for Creative Writing. Eagan-Donovan has published articles about screenwriting and film in journals and magazines, has appeared on several podcast series, and serves as a manuscript consultant for screenwriters and producers. She is currently working on a book for screenwriters, Shakespeare Auteur: Creating Authentic Characters for the Screen, and is developing a new documentary project on the birth of Elizabethan theater in London in the late 16th century. In 2019, she received the Oxfordian of the Year Award and in 2021 she received a research grant to study manuscript circulation among Shakespeare’s contemporaries at the British Library, Oxford University’s Bodleian Library, and the Dulwich College Archives.
Wendy Ewan
Los Angeles, CA
Graduated June 2018
WENDY EWAN’s full-length plays include Land of Enchantment and The Undesirables as well as numerous short and ten-minute plays, screenplays and TV pilots. She was a National Playwrights Conference Semi-Finalist; KCACTF Regional and National Finalist; Playwrights’ Center Core Apprentice Program Finalist; and ITVFEST Semi-Finalist. She has had several LA productions and is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America. She is the founder and Artistic Director of Scribe Stages, a site-specific “page to stage” theatre group established in 2015 to help emerging writers develop their work. Her full-lengths, children’s one-act and ten-minute plays can be found on New Play Exchange. She writes magical realism, absurdism, dramedy. “Fish out of water” is her go-to source of internal and external conflict. She loves the angst of teenagers and their parents. Ghosts and angels sometimes visit her characters as if it’s normal. She’s obsessed with ’80s period pieces. She strives to build bridges instead of walls, to explore identity without creating enemies or pointing fingers. An invitation is created with each piece; come to the party and meet new people whom you wouldn’t normally interact with. You might just find a new friend sitting next to you.
Erin FM
Graduated January 2023
ERIN FM is a playwright, puppeteer, improviser, songwriter, and indie producer.
Her ten-minute play Limited Engagement! was a Region 1 Finalist for the Gary Garrison Ten-Minute Play Award at the 2024 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival and was produced by Gloucester Stage for Boston Theater Marathon XXVI. She will be taking her One-Act play Aeschylus Died When an Eagle Dropped a Turtle on his Head to Providence Fringe (Fringe PVG) in July 2024. Her ten-minute play The Spirit of Goodwill will be produced by Theatre@First for their new works festival Love is Love in August of 2024. Currently, Erin is a participant in Outer Loop Theater’s 2024 Inner Enso Program (a devised theatre ensemble).
As a puppeteer, she has worked with Puppet Showplace Theater, Imaginary Beasts, Behind the Mask, and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Puppetry Conference.
As a comedian and public speaker, Erin was Shanghai Comedy Club’s first local headliner in 2016, and later that year gave a TEDx Talk about her comedy journey at Shanghai’s Mercedes-Benz Arena. She performs with the (improv) Spokane team “Business Donut.”
She holds an MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen from Lesley University and holds BAs in Philosophy and Comparative Literature from the University of Georgia.
Cynthia Veal Holm
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Graduated June 2017
Raised in the Midwest, CYNTHIA HOLM is delighted to have her work produced all over the United States and is a proud member of The Dramatist Guild and The Playwrights Center of Minneapolis.
J. Jean
Woodbury, MN
Graduated January 2019
An actor, turned director, turned writer; J. JEAN has been a lover of the theater since the age of twelve. She leans toward comedic writing and is particularly obsessed with Neil Simon. J. Jean’s plays address the human condition with humor. Her work has been a finalist for the Heartland Theatre Competition, MN Shorts competition, and the Women’s International Playwrighting Conference. She has received productions through Theatre Unbound (Smackdown 2020) and Scribe Stages. Visit her plays on the New Play Exchange.
Tyler Dean Kempf
Las Vegas, NV
Graduated June 2017
TYLER DEAN KEMPF is a collaborative queer storyteller and comedy writer for stage & screen. He was a finalist for the Playwright’s Center Jerome Fellowship and the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. His screenplay Mother of the Bride (Co-Written with Lauren McCarthy) was a 2019 Screencraft Comedy Screenplay Contest finalist. He’s currently focused on creating comedic television that showcases his unique and underrepresented point of view. He’s worked for The Second City since 2011, as both a director (one of the few gay men to have directed for the comedic institution), and as a corporate facilitator, traveling around the world to teach stuffy business folk how to utilize storytelling and improvisation to, essentially, be more empathetic humans.
Thato Mwosa
Boston, MA
Graduated June 2017
THATO R. MWOSA is an award-winning screenwriter, filmmaker, and illustrator. She has written and directed several short films and documentaries. In 2019, she wrote and directed her first feature film, Memoirs of a Black Girl, which premiered at the 2021 Boston Globe’s Black History Month Film Festival. The film was screened at prestigious festivals such as the Pan African Film Festival, The Bronze Lens Film Festival, Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival, and many more. Thato has written, produced, and directed several short film projects for organizations such as the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, U-Mass Amherst, Brigham and Women’s, Boston Medical Center, and Africans for Improved Access. She has been featured by several media outlets, including WBUR, Boston Globe, and Basic Black (WGBH). Thato is an Assistant Professor of Screenwriting at Emerson College in Boston.
Mckensi Scy Pascall
New York City, New York
Graduated June 2024
MCKENSI SCY PASCALL is a multi-disciplinary writer and actress from Trinidad and Tobago. She writes modern and historical fictional stories with supernatural elements and strong themes of existentialism, reflection and exploration. She primarily writes screenplays, plays and songs, believes in genre bending and encourages herself to tell stories in whatever form they choose to come. Motivated by travel and communities past and present, she knows writing is a vessel of connection and empathy and can be an immense force against oppression. Mckensi writes articles for the Black cultural magazine, Routes, and recently received the CUNY Fellowship from the Public Theater.
Rahima R. Rice
Washington, D.C.
Graduated January 2019
RAHIMA R. RICE is an award-winning writer from Washington, DC. She has a BA in Mass Media from the University of the District of Columbia, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing for the Stage & Screen from Lesley University. Rahima’s stage and screen work has been featured in the OLA Film Festival, the Anacostia Playhouse Visions/Revisions New Works Festival, and Signature Theatre’s SigWorks Reading Series. She has been published in LEVEL Magazine, The Daring, Looper and Medium. Rahima is the founder of the DC-based arts & entertainment company The 4208 Group, and curator of the 10-minute play festival The 10-Minute Taste.
Cassie M. Seinuk
Westborough MA
Graduated June 2013
CASSIE M. SEINUK is a Jewish Cuban playwright, stage manager, and educator in Boston, MA. Her play From the Deep won the Kennedy Center ACTF Latinidad Playwrights Award, The Pestalozzi New Play Prize, the Boston University Jewish Culture Endowment grant, Honorable Mention on the 2015 Kilroys List, and IRNE Award and FringeNYC award nominations. Seinuk’s short works have been produced internationally, including her award winning 10 minute play Occupy Hallmark, which won the Gary Garrison National 10 Minute Play award at the Kennedy Center. Seinuk is on faculty at Boston Conservatory at Berklee and Lesley University MFA in Creative Writing.
Nancy Temple
Needham, MA
Graduated June 2021
NANCY TEMPLE has written short and full-length plays (“Victoria for President! 1872,” NextStage Press, 2019 & “The Caregivers,” ARTemis Wisdom Anthology, 2021), as well as short stories (“Riverbend Blue,” riverSedge, 2022). Her short plays have been produced in various theatre festivals in the United States, Canada and Europe. Nancy has an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and is a member of Dramatist’s Guild, Playwrights’ Center, Playwrights’ Platform, and Indiana Writers’ Center.
Rhiannon Ciara Vaughn
Los Angeles, CA
Graduated January 2019
RHIANNON CIARA VAUGHN is an award-winning Chicana playwright based in Los Angeles. Her short play “Wine Night” was a Region 8 finalist at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. Her play “A Lovely Day Outside” was selected as a Top 5 Play at the 2019 Living on the Edge Festival. Her play Gifted* was a finalist for the 2019 Kennedy Center/NNPN MFA Workshop. Rhiannon’s plays can be found on New Play Exchange. Rhiannon has written, directed, produced, and edited short films that have screened at SF Sketchfest, Sitges Film Festival, Telluride Horror, Awareness Festival, and the 909 Film Festival, where her short comedy 9oh9 received the Ambassador Award. Rhiannon has produced live comedy including Underbelly, Good Heroine, and at Riot LA Comedy Festival. In 2013 her variety show THEME PARTY PRESENTS: BLUTHFEST! was featured in LA Weekly.