INDUSTRY 101 EVENT SERIES
Application Season 101
Wednesday, March 4, 2026 | 5-6:30 PM PT | Online
This webinar will walk you through how to approach screenwriting program application season. Humanitas's Program Manager, Daniel Plagens, will walk you through calendaring, budgeting, best practices, and (crucially) vetting opportunities, and more during this informational session. If you plan on applying to the 2026-2027 New Voices Fellowhip and/or College Screenwriting Awards, you won't want to miss this!
PANELISTS
Emmylou Diaz
Humanitas New Voices Fellowship Program Advisor
Emmylou Diaz is a first-generation Colombian-American writer, producer, and emerging director with more than a decade of experience in episodic television. She launched her career on the award-winning CW dramedy Jane the Virgin, rising from writers’ assistant to staff writer, and has since written and produced for acclaimed series including Bravo’s Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce, the CW reboot of Charmed, Shondaland’s Station 19, and Freeform/Hulu’s The Watchful Eye. She works as a Co-Executive Producer, serving as a trusted “number two” to top showrunners and helping to guide writers’ rooms and productions from script to screen. Emmy is a recipient of the NHMC Series Scriptwriters Fellowship and the RTT Hollywood Impact Fellowship, and she is proud to serve as Advisor to the Humanitas New Voices Fellowship. She's currently co-chair of the WGA Latinx Writers Committee. As an emerging director, her short film A Peculiar Morning is currently on the festival circuit. She holds an MFA in Acting from Harvard’s American Repertory Theatre Institute and a BA cum laude from Williams College.
Daniel Plagens
Writer, Humanitas Program Manager
In his role as Humanitas’s Program Manager, Daniel oversees the organization’s awards, fellowships, and direct aid projects while also managing day-to-day operational matters. He came to Humanitas after working for several years in the unscripted television and documentary worlds, and is a writer himself, being named to the University of Michigan Entertainment Coalition’s Blue List in 2020. He’s spoken about the screenwriting competition space to students enrolled at Boston University, Temple University, Florida State, Western Kentucky, Loyola Marymount, USC, and in UCLA’s Professional Programs. When he isn't thinking about movies and TV, he's writing The Book of Jobbed, his Substack newsletter about sports, culture, and the existential angst they cause.
Michelle Franke
Humanitas Executive Director
Michelle Franke is the Executive Director of Humanitas where she oversees programs, fundraising, management, and growth. She has spent over a decade supporting writers and developing arts and education programs, producing hundreds of events across Southern California. Named a “Face To Watch” by the Los Angeles Times, Franke served as the Executive Director of both PEN America Los Angeles and PEN Center USA. Franke has taught in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and at the University of Redlands. In 2010, she founded the literary journal, The Rattling Wall, which published the work of over 275 writers during its eight-year run. Franke was a store manager at Kramerbooks in Washington, D.C., and at Book Soup in Los Angeles, two of the country’s most beloved independent bookstores. Franke received her MFA in creative writing with honors from American University. As a poet, she’s received scholarships and fellowships, notably from the New York State Summer Writers Institute and the Folger Shakespeare Library. In recent years, Franke has appeared at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP), and on KPCC and KCRW, and elsewhere, where she’s interviewed writers and artists and discussed her own career in arts, advocacy, and community organization. She lives in Santa Monica, CA, with her husband and son.
