STARZ #TakeTheLead Writers’ Intensive History

Christopher Au – Christopher Au is a San Francisco-based filmmaker who spent nearly a decade working for some of the largest tech companies in Silicon Valley. Recently, his original pilot Cloak & Data was selected for the 2022 Film Independent Episodic Lab, where he was mentored by showrunner Silka Luisa and won the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation development grant. Au wrote, directed and produced the Wall Street dramedy series Bulge Bracket on Amazon Prime, which was featured in Bloomberg, the Gotham Week Project Market (IFP), CAAMFest, and SeriesFest, among others. In 2021, he was awarded a screenwriting grant from SFFILM and the Sloan Foundation to develop his feature script Airborne. Au won an Emmy as a producer with Fox Sports Net, and holds film and business degrees from Yale and NYU.

Xavier Burgin – Xavier Burgin is an Emmy-nominated writer/director from USC Cinema. He wrote on Starz’s wrestling drama, Heels. He’s written for the WWE, CryptTV, Amazon Studios, The Discovery Channel, and Paramount. He directed AMC Network’s Horror Noire, Adult Swim’s Juneteenth Holiday Special, and the BET series, Giants. Xavier is the dubbing director for Netflix’s sumo sports drama, Sanctuary.

Xavier grew up down south in Mississippi. Grandma’s TV would switch between SEC football, wrestling, movies, anime, and Playstation games. He’d ride off into the countryside on his bike for the day, then return home to watch Toonami before Bible study. Xavier’s love for storytelling grew from his fascination with religious myths. He loves the intersection between gods, angels, demons, and mortals. As a child, he wondered if these fantastical stories could exist. Now, he chooses to be the hand that writes them. Xavier developed Sankova, a sci-fi comedy, with Justin Simien’s Culture Machine at Paramount. He wrote a horror feature for CryptTV and the WWE. He directed the English Dub of Sanctuary, a Netflix sports drama about a young sumo wrestler. Xavier’s film, Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, expounds on the untold history of Black Americans in the genre. The documentary premiered on horror streamer, Shudder. Xavier earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for his directorial work on the BET show, Giants. He directed Juneteenth With Open Mike Eagle, an Adult Swim Special about the national holiday’s history.

Xavier’s shadowed on the TV series American Horror Story, The Ms. Pat Show, and Sacrifice. He’s participated in numerous industry programs, including: Paramount’s Viewfinder Program, Netflix’s Dubbing Initiative, The Sundance Labs, HBO’s Short Film Showcase, Berlinale Talents, The Commercial Directors Diversity Program, and Ryan Murphy’s Director Shadow Program. Xavier’s collaborations also include D.C. Comics, Lenovo, LOL Network, and Stage 3 Productions.

Caroline Guo – Like any good Chinese-American daughter, Caroline Guo promised her parents she’d be a doctor or lawyer… only to become a diehard film nerd. She was a finalist for the 2021 NALIP & Netflix Women of Color Short Film Incubator and 2020 Women in Film & The Black List Feature Residency with the award-winning FIRECRACKER, an Official Selection at the OutFest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival, Urbanworld Film Festival, Asian American International Film Festival, San Diego Asian Film Festival, Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival and more. It’s now distributed on Asia’s 1st and largest LGBTQ+ platform GagaOOLala.

Caroline is currently in development for her feature debut as writer/director, the sports comedy/coming-of-age feature DEAR MICHELLE that was selected for the 2023 Film London Production Finance Market in association with the BFI London Film Festival. She’s also developing a Kids’ Animation TV series with ACE Entertainment (TO ALL THE BOYS I’VE LOVED BEFORE), EP Stephen Daldry (THE CROWN) and Showrunner Joe Purdy (HEY ARNOLD!). A graduate of Northwestern University, Caroline has published in academic journals, was selected as finalist for the inaugural INC TV Writing Program, semifinalist for the Universal Writers’ Program as well as a Sundance Development Lab and Austin Film Festival 2nd Rounder, and fulfilled her wildest film nerd dreams by featuring in Criterion Collection’s new release of Johnnie To’s THROW DOWN.

Hailing from Atlanta but having lived in Chicago, Paris, London and Beijing, Caroline is now based in Los Angeles, previously working in TV Development at MACRO. As a writer and director, she’s most interested in telling personal stories with humor and heart, especially of Asian and Asian-American women, to shed light on larger social issues.

Lyn Alicia Henderson – Lyn Alicia Henderson hails from the suburbs of Silver Spring, Md. She first demonstrated her writing chops as a comic and then with Her award-winning play Girls Night Out. Building on that success, she wrote, produced, and starred in the short film “Short on Sugar,” which collected numerous awards at prestigious film festivals and enjoyed a three-year run on HBO and CINEMAX.

As a writer, Lyn Alicia has a unique voice that takes you down unexpected corridors and sheds light on the quirky side of queerness, motherhood, friendship, and race. Her voice is edgy and bizarrely wholesome at the same time. It’s a contradictory style that is difficult to achieve, yet she does that in her storytelling. The main thread in her work is the ability to create characters we can relate to, even as they seem different at first glance. Her stories are alive with personalities that are authentic, funny, irreverent, and smart. Lyn Alicia is also a versatile character actor. She has guest-starred on numerous television shows and has recurred on many others. Her notable portrayal of Pam Olbes on the long-running series “ER” spanned 14 seasons, earning her three SAG Awards for “Best Ensemble in a Drama Series.”

Diego Lanao – Diego Lanao is a proud Peruvian-American writer and actor who has studied playwriting at HB Studio, television writing at Script Anatomy, TV Story Structure with Eric Kaplan and sketch writing at the Upright Citizens Brigade. Most recently, his TV episodic pilot, THE RIGHT ONE ALIVE, was selected for the 2023 NHMC Series Script Writers Program and placed on the 2022 Latinx List x The Black List. He was named a TV writer finalist for the 2022 NBC Writers on the Launch Program and a writer finalist for the 2021 3rd Annual NOSOTROS & NBC Ya Tu Sabes Monologue Showcase. His theater work has been developed and featured at: SolFest Latiné Theater Festival, AMT Theater New Work Development Program, Teatro Chelsea, The Barrow Group Performing Arts Center, Latinx Playwrights Circle Fresh Draft Series and South Texas College Theater. He is a proud member of the Latinx Playwrights Circle (2023 Summer Dramatists Guild Fellow) and The EST/LA’s New West Playwrights Group. He earned a B.A. in Biology with a Joint Minor in Computer Science and Mathematics from NYU.

Eunice Levis – Writer and director, Eunice Levis is a first-generation Dominican American from the Bronx, New York. Eunice’s work focuses on genre-bending stories that combine her love of horror, sci-fi, thriller and fantasy often through a diasporic lens. Her work seeks to disrupt and challenge dominant narratives around technology, race, gender, history, and diaspora identity by altering the stories we tell about them.

She is a two-time Sundance Lab Second Rounder, a Stowe Story Lab Fellow, an Alliance of Women Directors mentee and a Netflix/NALIP Women of Color Short Film Incubator Fellow. Eunice’s folklore horror micro short FELL ENDS was an extraordinary selection at NYX’s 13 minutes of horror film festival and streamed on Shudder.Her latest film, RO & THE STARDUST, a space fantasy short was part of the 2021 NALIP Latino Lens Women of Color Short Film Incubator, sponsored by Netflix. The film won Best Narrative Short at the 25th Annual Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival, making it a 2024 Oscar® qualified Narrative Short Film. In addition to writing and directing, Eunice is a film adjunct professor and cohosts Café Negro con Genre, a podcast that promotes creatives working in the genre space.

Tyler Miguel Mercer – Tyler Miguel Mercer is a director and writer. His award-winning “must-see” (Vulture) short films have been featured as Vimeo Staff Picks and screened at Outfest LA, NewFest, HollyShorts, and more. Most recently he directed GLAAD’s digital series DÍMELO spotlighting queer Latine voices in entertainment; GROWING UP REALITY for Yahoo’s In The Know channel; and the 2022 live VMA After-Show for MTV. He has also made commercials and content for brands like Bumble, Grindr, Netflix, and Logo. Tyler also wrote and produced for over 200 episodes of MTV’s award-winning series NEED TO KNOW, and his original scripts have ranked in national competitions. He holds a BFA from NYU Tisch and is represented by UTA & Range Media Partners. 

Wesley Rodriguez – Wesley “Wes” Rodriguez is a Latino, bilingual writer, director, and cinematographer based in Los Angeles. As a first-generation Cuban-Guatemalan American, he grew up as an only child in a tightly-knit household in Naples, Fla., where he spent his time at the intersection of his imagination, virtually as a video game nerd and in his backyard as an Eagle Scout. As a first-generation multi-disciplinary artist, his work explores themes of love, identity, metaphysics, and spirituality with a focus on healing generational trauma through laughter and self-reflection. Under the mentorship of Werner Herzog, Wes directed Pa’lante, an award-winning short film shot on location in Cuba. Shortly after, Wes founded Pa’lante Pictures, a Latine production company focused on empowering and uplifting voices in the Latino community through genre storytelling.

Beyond his career as a writer-director, Wesley’s work as a commercial and narrative cinematographer has been exhibited both domestically and internationally. Most recently, Wes served as the Virtual Production cinematographer and technical director for AMC Networks’ live and interactive Twitch Channel, FearHQ. Wes is a GFS LA Frieze Award Fellow, Hola Mexico TFT Fellow, NALIP Latino Media Market TV Writing Fellow, and a DGA John Frankenheimer Fellow. He earned an M.F.A. from the USC School of Cinematic Arts and holds a B.S. in Media Production from the University of Florida. He has also taught film and mentored underrepresented youth in East LA through the Latino Film Institute’s Youth Cinema Project under the guidance of its founder, Edward James Olmos. Currently, Wes practices mindfulness and martial arts at the Shaolin Temple Los Angeles and is an avid hiker, plant dad and photographer.

Vee Saieh – Vee Saieh has spent her life between worlds—as a Colombian immigrant, a trans woman, and a bad Catholic with an esoteric flair. As a drama and genre writer, she blends her passion for the unknown with the stark realities of life to tell stories of ghosts, queerness, and broken people and their one shot at redemption. Vee is a 2023 Film Independent Project Involve Fellow, and was a finalist for the 2023 NBC Launch TV Writers Program. Her feature script ASIA A has received multiple awards, including Sloan grants from the Tribeca Film Institute and Film Independent’s Fast Track program. Her other projects have placed second and third in the PAGE Awards, Top 5 in Final Draft’s Big Break contest and have been a finalist for both WeScreenplay’s TV Lab and Diverse Voices Lab.

Vee’s collaborations on short films have garnered numerous honors including the Jury Prize at the DGA Student Awards, Best Narrative Short at the San Diego Latino Film Festival, and two finalist placements in HBO Max’s Short Film competition. She’s also been nominated for a Best of NewFilmmakers LA Award. Vee has an MFA in Screenwriting from USC. She is repped by Bellevue.

Ora Yashar – Writer/Director Ora Yashar fell in love with screen magic when her father made the horrible (yet awesome) decision to take her six-year-old self to see “Goodfellas.” Recognizing “gangster” wasn’t a viable career route, she decided on “storyteller.”Coming of age in the US as an Iranian-American greatly influenced Ora’s POV and her work seeks to empower voices that too often go unheard. Recent credits include penning an Iranian-American legal drama for ESX Entertainment and co-producing the salon theatre show Persian Sunrise, American Sunset, which explores the fractured experiences of Iranians living in the U.S. Ora is a Film Independent Episodic Lab Fellow and currently assists the showrunners of the hit series “The Equalizer” where she co-wrote episode 311. She earned her MFA in Directing at Chapman University and is repped at MetaMorphic Entertainment.