WGAEF Board Members

Tom Fontana, President, has written and produced such ground breaking television series as St. Elsewhere, Homicide: Life On The Street, and Oz, for which he has received, among others, three Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, and three Writers’ Guild Awards. Read Full Bio.
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John Markus, First Vice President, is an Emmy Award-winning writer who began his career in high school, supplying jokes about his rural Ohio hometown to Broadway columnist Earl Wilson. After graduating from Stanford University he moved to Los Angeles where he landed a job writing a revival of the animated “Mighty Mouse”. Read Full Bio.
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Rick Dresser, Second Vice President, has widely produced plays regionally, in New York, and in Europe. Off-Broadway plays include Rounding Third, Below the Belt, Gun-Shy, and Better Days. Read Full Bio.
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Jim Hart, Secretary, was born in Shreveport, Louisiana and grew up in Ft. Worth Texas on Drive-In Movies and Saturday Matinees. Soon after graduating from SMU in Dallas, (class of 69) he began producing films in the 1970's. His first feature film, Summer Run, opened the USA film festival at SMU in 1972. Read Full Bio.
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Lulie Haddad,Treasurer, is the founder of EveryVoice Productions and an award winning documentary producer/director/writer working in television and film for over fifteen years. Read Full Bio.
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Chris Albers has been a monologue writer at Late Night With Conan O'Brien since 1995. He has also written for Late Night with David Letterman, Late Show with David Letterman, The Jon Stewart Show and Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. Read Full Bio.
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Andrew Bergman was crowned the “Unknown King of Comedy” by New York Magazine, before beginning his motion picture career at the very top, writing the original story and co-authoring the screenplay of Blazing Saddles at the age of 27, and winning the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1975. Read Full Bio.
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Eric Bogosian wrote and starred in the play, Talk Radio (NYSF – 1987; Broadway with Liev Schreiber- 2007). For this work he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and the Tony award. For his film adaptation of Talk Radio Bogosian received the Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear. Read Full Bio.
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Marshall Brickman is an Academy Award winning screenwriter who has worked on such hits as Annie Hall and The Tonight Show. Read Full Bio.
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Nora Ephron is a film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, and journalist. Her film career includes many iconic films, such as When Harry Met Sally..., Sleepless in Seattle, Silkwood, You've Got Mail, and Michael. She has been nominated for the Academy Award for Writing three times. Read Full Bio.
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Richard LaGravenese born in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Emerson College and NYU’s Experimental Theatre Wing. LaGravenese’s first professional gig was as a contributing writer for the Off Broadway revue “A MY NAME IS ALICE” directed by Joan Micklin Silver. Read Full Bio.
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Warren Leight is currently executive producer and showrunner of Lights Out for FX. He was formerly the executive producer and showrunner of HBO's In Treatment and Dick Wolf's Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Read Full Bio.
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Kenneth Lonergan is a Pulitzer- and Academy Award-nominated playwright, screenwriter, and director born in the Bronx, New York City, New York. He began writing in high school, later graduating from the NYU Playwriting Program. Read Full Bio.
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Jenny Lumet is the author of Rachel Getting Married and several other screenplays. She is a 7th and 8th grade school teacher at Manhattan Country School, a progressive, Independent School which promotes diversity and social responsibility. Read Full Bio.
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Marsha Norman is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Blackburn Prize, Hull-Warriner, and Drama Desk Awards for her play Night, Mother. She is a Tony and Drama Desk Award winner for her book for the Broadway musical, The Secret Garden. Read Full Bio.
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Eric Overmyer is a playwright and a television writer/producer. In television, he has worked on numerous shows, including St. Elsewhere, Homicide: Life on the Street, Law & Order, The Wire and New Amsterdam. Read Full Bio.
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Ruben Santiago-Hudson made his debut as a screenwriter with HBO’s Lackawanna Blues for which he received multiple honors including The Humanitas Prize, a Christopher Award, National Board of Review Honors, An NAACP Award and an Emmy, Golden Globe and a WGA nomination. Read Full Bio.
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John Patrick Shanley is from The Bronx. His plays include Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Savage in Limbo, Italian American Reconciliation, Welcome to the Moon, Four Dogs and a Bone, Celini, Dirty Story and Defiance. His theatrical work is performed extensively across the United States and around the world. For his play, Doubt, he received both the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Read Full Bio.
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Susanna Styron is a screenwriter, director and documentary film-maker. Her writing credits include the feature film Shadrach, which she also directed, In From the Night and Back When we were Grown-Ups for Hallmark Hall of Fame, and Crossing the Line and Taking Back Our Town for Lifetime. Read Full Bio.
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David Simon is a Baltimore-based author, journalist and writer-producer of television. Born in Washington, he came north to Baltimore after graduating from the University of Maryland to work as a police reporter at the Baltimore Sun. In 1988, after four years on the crime beat, he took a leave of absence to write Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Read Full Bio.
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Michael Weller is a playwright and screenwriter who studied classical music composition at Brandeis University under Irving Fine, Harold Shapiro and Martin Boykin and earned his living as a jazz pianist before taking his graduate degree in theater at the University of Manchester, England. Read Full Bio.
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Jim Yoshimura is a Japanese American writer and producer, best known for his screenwriting work on the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street and the short-lived Fox series The Jury, for which he served as a co-creator. Read Full Bio.
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Michael Winship is President of the Writers Guild of America, East. He’s a writer and producer who has worked for America’s major PBS stations, CBS, the Discovery and Learning Channels, A&E, Turner Broadcasting, the Disney Channel, the Children’s Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop), National Geographic and the Smithsonian, among others. Read Full Bio.
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Lowell Peterson, Ex-officio, is executive director of the Writers Guild of America, East, the 4,000-member labor union representing writers in television, motion pictures, radio, and new media – people who create drama, comedy, news, and more. Read Full Bio.
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Marsha Manns is Executive Director of the Writers Guild of America, East Foundation, where she is involved in the development of original programming with attendant outreach, funding, volunteer and staff support for the Foundation’s mission to perpetuate the art and craft of storytelling through education and practical experience. Read Full Bio.