2025-2026 New Voices Fellows & Mentors
Mentorship is the cornerstone of Humanitas’s New Voices Fellowship program, so we’re excited to introduce this year’s New Voices mentors:
Joey Soloway is mentoring V Marks
Robin Swicord is mentoring Nicole Lynn Cohen
Cooper Raiff is mentoring Drew McInturff
Jeanie Bergen is mentoring Ariana Newhouse
Susannah Grant is mentoring Meg Dudley
Collectively, Joey, Robin, Cooper, Jeanie, and Susannah represent decades of writing and filmmaking experience; a multitude of awards recognition from the likes of The Oscars, Emmys, Sundance, and the Peabody Awards; and a wealth of craft and business knowledge.
With support from our office, New Voices mentors and fellows spend the fellowship discussing the scripts that fellows applied with. We know that a dedicated mentor can have a transformative impact on an early career writer's life. But what’s also true is that we often hear from mentors, that this work is equally meaningful to them, to be able to provide the kind of support that they received (or wanted to receive) as they got started.
V MARKS
PRONOUNS: he/they
PROJECT: Losing It | Feature
LOGLINE: A nerdy trans girl wins one high school ping-pong game and America loses its mind, making her the target of a hate campaign and the unwilling face of a movement. Now she must fight for her right to play a sport she doesn’t even like and prove she doesn’t have a biological advantage by training to be the worst ping-pong player of all time.
BIO: V Marks grew up in Brooklyn and moved to LA because they can only live in cities with a minimum of 25 gay bars. After getting their BFA in Screenwriting from USC, they received the Yes And Laughter Lab Fellowship, New Voices Fellowship, and Humanitas College Comedy Award. V’s writing explores the two questions that keep them up at night: “what do we owe each other in this cutthroat world?” and “how many conservatives can I piss off with one script?”
V’S MENTOR: JOEY SOLOWAY
Joey Soloway (they/them) is best known for creating, producing, directing, and writing the acclaimed Amazon original television series Transparent (2014-2019), for which they were nominated for five Emmy Awards (winning two) and three Golden Globes Awards (winning one). Overall, the show received twenty-four Emmy nominations and eight Emmy awards during its run. Transparent made history as the first streaming series to win a major award as Best Series. Other awards include Best Director at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014 for their first feature, Afternoon Delight, as well as Peabody, BAFTA, and SAG awards and nominations for both Transparent and the iconic feminist cult series I Love Dick.
Soloway has published two memoirs: Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants and She Wants It: Desire, Power, and Toppling the Patriarchy, which was praised by critics and readers alike and was chosen as a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Soloway is a cofounder of 5050by2020, an artist empowerment network and strategic initiative of Timeʼs Up. They co-launched the Disruptors Fellowship with Favianna Rodriguez, which is awarded to ten artists of color who also identify as trans and/or non-binary, disabled, undocumented and/or formerly undocumented.
Soloway is currently co-writing the musical The Transcendants with their sibling Faith Soloway. Soloway is also currently partnering with Maudlyne Ihejirika, Francis Woods and Jordan Peele's production company, Monkeypaw, on The South Commons Experiment, a documentary feature about growing up in Chicago's planned neighborhood of South Commons. Soloway has two sons and splits their time between Los Angeles and Provincetown, Massachusetts.
NICOLE LYNN COHEN
PRONOUNS: she/her
PROJECT: The Silent Treatment | Feature
LOGLINE: A detached sign language interpreter is forced to confront his trauma during a 72-hour psychiatric hold — not as a patient, but as the interpreter for a troubled Deaf teen whose issues mirror his own.
BIO: Nicole Lynn Cohen is a screenwriter based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work spans multiple genres and focuses on earnest, often overlooked characters fighting for agency against life's uncontrollable factors. Nicole cut her teeth at multiple independent production companies such as SpectreVision and Felix Culpa, which helped develop her own taste and sharpened her ear for storytelling. In addition to screenwriting, she heads development at Ser Nocturna, a women-led independent production company based in New York. Her favorite artistic medium is the sentence.
NICOLE’S MENTOR: ROBIN SWICORD
Robin Swicord is primarily known for her work as a screenwriter for Memoirs Of A Geisha (Satellite Award for best screenplay); the 1994 Little Women (Writers Guild award nomination, Satellite award); Matilda (with her husband Nicholas Kazan); and the cult comedy Shag; The Perez Family; Practical Magic. Swicord received an Oscar nomination for her contribution to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a project Swicord originated and worked on for more than a decade. Swicord made her feature-directing debut with Sony Classic’s The Jane Austen Book Club, produced by Julie Lynn and John Calley, for which Swicord also wrote the screenplay adaptation. She also wrote and directed Wakefield, for Bryan Cranston and Jennifer Garner, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival. As both writer and co-Executive Producer, Swicord collaborated with Ava DuVernay on DuVernay’s five-part miniseries, When They See Us, for Netflix.
Swicord served for seven years as a Governor for the Writers Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. She mentors for the Sundance Screenwriting lab and Film Independent’s creative labs, and for Rideback Rise. She is an honorary professor at the Munich film school, HFF, where Swicord teaches an annual 10-day screenwriting workshop that focuses on narrative and the elements of drama.
DREW MCINTURFF
PRONOUNS: he/him
PROJECT: I Need Your Kidney, Bro | Feature
LOGLINE: A struggling underachiever reconnects with his relatively-clean addict of an older brother when he shows up on his doorstep in need of a kidney.
BIO: Drew McInturff was raised by two political operatives in love in Washington, D.C. and spent most of his youth whipping votes to order pizza again for dinner. After being diagnosed with Crohn's disease at a young age he learned that steroids are the best medicine and laughter is a close second. Graduating from Florida State University’s MFA Screenwriting Program in 2022 he immediately moved to Los Angeles to pursue writing full time.
DREW’S MENTOR: COOPER RAIFF
A true multi-hyphenate, Cooper Raiff was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. His second original feature, Cha Cha Real Smooth, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2021. The film was the recipient of the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award and was released in 2022 to critical acclaim via Apple Original Films. Cooper wrote, directed, and produced the film in which he stars opposite Dakota Johnson and Leslie Mann.
His debut feature Shithouse, which he also starred in, wrote, directed, edited, and produced, premiered in competition at SXSW in 2020 where it won the Grand Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature. Shithouse was released by IFC Films in 2020 and was named one of the 10 best movies of 2020 by Vanity Fair. Raiff was also included on Variety's 2022 "10 Directors To Watch" list.
Cooper’s independent TV show which he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in alongside Mark Ruffalo, Lili Reinhart, Havana Rose Liu, and Betty Gilpin, Hal and Harper, premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, to rave reviews. Lili Reinhart also won best actress at Series Mania for her star turn in the show. The series was acquired by MUBI and is currently available to stream on their platform.
ARIANA NEWHOUSE
PRONOUNS: she/her
PROJECT: The Whirlaways | One-hour Pilot
LOGLINE: A 1950 amateur women's bowler and new mother bowls for broke when she beats the reigning national champion, sending ripples through her identity, her marriage, and her loins. Think Middle American THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL meets A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN.
BIO: Ariana Newhouse is a bisexual writer and comedian heavily influenced by her corn-fed, blue collar upbringing in Indiana. With heart and humor, she writes about the duality of human experience and women up against systems. Her newsletter, Respectful Smartass, was a Top 25 Humor Publication on Substack in 2022, and she was named an Emerging Artist at SF Sketchfest 2024. A 5x NCAA All-American sprinter, her latest sports dramedy pilot landed her a spot as a 2025 Humanitas New Voices Fellow.
ARIANA’S MENTOR: JEANIE BERGEN
Jeanie Bergen is currently in development with Netflix on her original half-hour comedy pilot. She was most recently staffed on Netflix’s new comedic thriller VLADIMIR with Rachel Weisz starring and Sharon Horgan & Jason Winer producing. Before that she was on DAVE, KINGS OF AMERICA for Netflix, MR. CORMAN for Apple and ONE MISSISSIPPI for Amazon. She sold her autobiographical comedy, E IS FOR EDIE, about her experience becoming her sister’s guardian, to Spectrum Originals in 2018. Prior to writing for television, she was a three-time Emmy award-winning journalist. Jeanie is a graduate of USC’s MFA writing program where she now teaches screenwriting. She is currently enrolled in 2026 WGA Showrunner Training Program.
MEG DUDLEY
PRONOUNS: she/her
PROJECT: One Heart | Feature
LOGLINE: A small town Texas housewife takes on the NCAA in a landmark court case after her husband dies from CTE, a degenerative dementia caused by his time playing football in college. Based on a true story.
BIO: Meg Dudley is a Texas-born, Los Angeles-based screenwriter with nearly two decades in film and television production. A graduate of the American Film Institute’s MFA Screenwriting program, she is a recipient of both Screenwriting and Development awards from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Humanitas New Voices Fellowship. Meg specializes in character driven, female-led stories that blend dark comedy with emotional depth, often exploring the messiness of coming of age whether at thirteen, thirty, or sixty-three. She currently lives with her two cats Harold (7) and Maude (7).
MEG’S MENTOR: SUSANNAH GRANT
Susannah Grant is a WGA- and Academy Award-nominated writer, producer and director. She wrote the screenplay for Erin Brockovich, The Soloist, In Her Shoes, 28 Days, and co-wrote Ever After, Pocahontas, Charlotte’s Web and The 5th Wave. She also wrote and directed Catch and Release and Lonely Planet.
Her television writing credits include Netflix’s Unbelievable, HBO’s Confirmation, the CBS series A Gifted Man, and the Fox series Party of Five. Her series executive producing credits include Fleishman is in Trouble for F/X and Lessons in Chemistry for Apple TV. She is currently working on Discretion for Paramount +.
Grant is an alumna of Amherst College and the American Film Institute. She received the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences' Nicholl Fellowship in screenwriting. In 2011, Grant received the Valentine Davies Award from the Writers Guild of America. In 2017, she received the WGA’s Paul Selvin Award.