MFA in Narrative Media Writing

Fall 2023 Residency

👉 Narrative Nonfiction Schedule

👉 Screenwriting Schedule

Questions?

Contact Anne Hurne

Email: anne.hurne@uga.edu

706-542-7833

Facebook: J. Anne Hurne

The weather. August in Georgia can be sweltering, but generally speaking, the temperature hangs around 80-90° F. Before you pack, take a quick look at the weather. Bring a sweater/hoodie/jacket for classroom time. The AC is powerful and it’s easy to get chilled.

Opening Reception: Please remember that our opening reception is only for students, faculty, staff, and guest speakers. We want to get together to meet and greet. Thank you for understanding.

The opening reception is at Trappeze Pub at 269 Hull St. The van will shuttle everyone back and forth from the hotel. Please be ready to be picked up at the Hotel Indigo around 5:30 to 5:45 p.m. on Sunday, July 30. If it’s not raining, it’s a nice walk from the hotel.

Printing needs: If you need Anne to print anything, send it before you arrive in Athens, along with the number of copies you need printed. Make sure you have done all your updates and revisions BEFORE you send it for printing.

How are we getting back and forth to campus? A UGA van and the Hotel Indigo shuttle will shuttle participants from the Hotel Indigo every morning starting at 7:45 a.m. We will make back and forth runs to the Journalism building until everyone has arrived. Anyone who is a part of the residency can park in the Hotel Indigo parking lot whether you are staying there or not. (Do not park across the tiny street from the entrance to the Hotel Indigo, because it is not the hotel’s parking lot.)

In the evening, we will have the same van available to shuttle people back to the Hotel Indigo. Please note you might have to wait a few minutes to catch the next available shuttle.

The shuttle will not run otherwise unless there is an emergency. We must reserve the van for our special guest speakers and faculty. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding in advance.

Parking on campus at the Hull Street Deck is $10 per day, payable at the kiosk located on each floor of the parking deck.

Lunch: There are lots of options for lunch. You can go into downtown Athens, https://www.visitathensga.com/restaurants/downtown-athens-restaurants/, or order from Doordash, or our local version: https://www.orderbulldawgfood.com/. Bulldawg Food has more local places and the drivers know the campus a bit better than a random Doordasher.

Breakfast: Provided Monday through Friday, beginning at 8 a.m., platters of food from various places. Monday and Friday it will be from Flying Biscuit, Tuesday will be from McAlisters, Wednesday from Mama’s Boy, and Thursday from Jason’s Deli. We’ll have vegetarian options and as many options for vegans as is possible.

BRING A WATER BOTTLE: There will not be bottled water available, so make sure to grab a water container with a lid for yourself. There are filtered water dispensers on each floor of the building.

COVID protocols for UGA: We strongly encourage you get vaccinated to protect everyone. No one is going to look at you funny if you feel like you want to mask up. See the UGA Coronavirus website for more details.

View pictures from our Spring 2023 Residency:

David Black

David Black founded his agency in 1989 with the goal of representing books that interest him. Narrative non-fiction has formed the core of the business, though he has a penchant for some works of fiction as well. He specializes in sports, business, journalism and politics, and has a soft spot for books in the culinary world, be they narratives or cookbooks.

Paul Kix

Paul Kix is an author and magazine writer who’s written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, GQ and ESPN: The Magazine, among other publications. At ESPN, he was part of a small team that won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His first book, The Saboteur, was a No. 1 best-seller on Amazon and optioned by Steven Spielberg. His second book, You Have to be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live, was Amazon’s Pick of the Month for Nonfiction and is available wherever books are sold. He lives with his family in Connecticut.

Beth Macy

Beth Macy is an award-winning journalist and author of several highly acclaimed nonfiction books including Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America, and her latest, Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis. She began her career as a newspaper reporter and to this day, her journalism M.O. is to keep digging, follow what moves you.

Lisa Pollak

Lisa Pollak is a reporter, editor and audio producer who specializes in deeply reported narrative journalism about ordinary people in extraordinary situations. She spent nearly a decade as a producer for the highly acclaimed radio program “This American Life” and now works independently as a podcast editor, consultant and producer. In addition to TAL, her work has aired on ESPN’s “30 for 30,” NPR’s “Embedded,” “99 percent Invisible,” and “Reveal,” among others. As a series editor her credits include “According to Need,” a series on homelessness that won a Dupont award in 2022, and “The Capital Gazette,” which won the Edward R. Murrow award for excellence in writing. Lisa began her career as a newspaper reporter focusing on feature stories inspired by news events. Her story “The Umpire’s Sons” — written while she was on staff at the Baltimore Sun — won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. In addition to her radio work, Lisa spent two seasons as a producer for Showtime television’s Emmy award-winning series “This American Life.” She was also a story producer on “The King,” a feature documentary directed by Eugene Jarecki which premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival and at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

Jill Severn

Jill Severn has been a certified archivist with the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies for 25 years. She holds an MA in history from the University of Georgia and a Certificate in Museum Management from the University of South Carolina. She manages the access and outreach unit, which includes exhibit and events programs, research services, and instruction. For most of her career, Severn has focused on exploring and developing an archives-centered pedagogy for learning both in and outside academia. In 2015 she helped to establish the University of Georgia’s Special Collections Faculty Teaching Fellows Program, which provides training and support to university instructors to develop archives-centered courses that make significant use of special collections materials. Since 2015, 69 faculty from 20 dierent departments on campus have completed the program. The program has been honored by the Georgia Historical Records and Advisory Council in 2020. In 2021 Severn was awarded the Marta Lange/CQ Press Award, given annually by the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association.

Ginger Thompson

Ginger Thompson, a prize-winning journalist, has spent much of her career reporting from and about Latin America. The daughter of an Army couple, she is currently the Chief of Correspondents and a Deputy Managing Editor at ProPublica. Previously she reported for The New York Times and The Baltimore Sun. She has won numerous awards, including the Chancellor Award, a Maria Moors Cabot Medal, and Polk and Peabody awards. She was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at The Times for a series of stories about race in America and has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service, including for a ProPublica series of stories that forced the Trump administration to end its policy of separating undocumented immigrant children from their parents at the southern border. She is a member of the Pulitzer Board, the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and The Overseas Press Club Board of Governors.

Marion Dayre

Marion Dayre is a writer/producer. Her credits include Head Writer/Executive Producer on Marvel’s ECHO; Writer/Producer of Apple’s SHANTARAM; Writer/Executive Story Editor of AMC’S BETTER CALL SAUL and Hulu’s THE ACT; Showrunner/Executive Producer of Amazon’s upcoming WYTCHES, and Associate Producer of Killer Film’s feature DEALIN’ WITH IDIOTS. Her 5 seasons of work on BCS earned her 4 WGA Nominations, 4 Emmy nominations, a Peabody Award, a Saturn Award, and two individual WGA nominations for her episodes. Her autobiographical comedy pilot BURY ME, about growing up in a funeral home in South Central (Nebraska), was selected as one of ten projects for Sundance’s Inaugural Episodic Writers’ Lab. Marion got her MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA and teaches drama series development at San Francisco State University. She got her start as an intern at Laura Ziskin Productions before assisting Executive Producers on Showtime’s UNITED STATES OF TARA, HBO’s CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, and ABC’s THE GOLDBERGS.

Grant S. Johnson

Grant S. Johnson’s third directorial feature film, Agent Game, released in April 2022 by Lionsgate and Sony Pictures, an action spy thriller starring Dermot Mulroney, Adan Canto, Katie Cassidy, Annie Ilonzeh, Rhys Coiro, Barkhad Abdi, with Jason Isaacs, and Mel Gibson.

Grant is a Producer of Netflix’s upcoming May December, starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, and directed by Todd Haynes.

Grant is the Second Unit Director and an Executive Producer of the upcoming Summer Camp, starring Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates, Alfre Woodard, Eugene Levy, Dennis Haysbert, Beverly D’Angelo, Josh Peck, and Nicole Richie.

Grant is a filmmaker from New York City. He attended Swarthmore College (‘14), where he pitched for the baseball team and majored in art history.

Grant’s wrote, directed, and produced Nighthawks, which premiered during Tribeca Film Festival on May 4, 2019.

In November 2016, Grant was a producer on A Bronx Tale (the Broadway musical), which opened to a great New York Times review. Grant is also a partner on The Band’s Visit (the Broadway musical), which won 10 Tony Awards including Best Musical.

Grant wrote, co-directed, and produced his first feature film Frat Star, which was released by Gravitas Ventures and Netflix in 2017.

Gregory Nava

Gregory Nava is an academy award, golden globe and Emmy nominated director and writer. He has two films on the library of congress national registry of “American classics”: the Oscar nominated “El Norte,” the milestone film about central American refugees which critic Roger Ebert called “The Grapes of Wrath of our Time,” and “Selena,” the story of the slain Tejano singer which was Jennifer Lopez star-making role.

He directed and wrote the Oscar nominated film “Mi Familia.” He is a writer of the academy award winning film “Frida” and his television series “American family” was nominated for an Emmy and golden globe for best limited series. His films have been honored at many international film festivals including Cannes, Sundance, Berlin, San Sebastian and Telluride. He was a governor of the academy of motion picture arts and sciences, he founded film independent, the largest independent film organization, and he has won “life achievement” awards from the Kennedy center in Washington, the alma awards, the imagen foundation and the Guadalajara international film festival.

Ashley Patterson

Atlanta-based Script Supervisor Ashley Patterson has worked on all types of productions, from television series and large budget features, such as The Tomorrow War, starring Chris Pratt, to commercials and independent films, such as The Whistleblower starring Rachel Weisz and Vanessa Redgrave. Her recent credits include the award-winning series Atlanta, newly nominated series Swarm, and the upcoming Netflix film A Family Affair, starring Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron. Ashley holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Film from Columbia University.

Jon Sherman

Jon Sherman began his career writing for Bill Nye The Science Guy, and then created MTV’s first scripted series, Dead At 21. Practiced in both drama and comedy, Jon has written for Frasier, Royal Pains, Sabrina The Teenage Witch, and others during his three professional decades. He is a former member of the improv group LA TheatreSports, a Renaissance Faire performer (yes, really), graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in English from Stanford, and has multiple certifications from the International Sommelier Guild. His latest pilot, Tooth & Nail is currently being shopped to networks by Little Island Productions (Patrick Melrose, The Wheel of Time).

Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Narrative Media Writing

UGA’s unique low-residency MFA program allows students to complete most of the degree requirements off campus while developing their skills and talents under the guidance of experienced faculty writing mentors.

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