The Carol & Elton Holman Screenwriting Competition
The Carol & Elton Holman Screenwriting Competition awards $500 to the author of the best screenplay written by a current Wichita State University student. Past winners submitted screenplays that were well-written, unique, and engaging.
2012 Winner - Suzanne Hodsden for Alexandra the Almost
Glenn Gunnels/WSU
Mike Wood, Executive Director of the Media Resources Center, awards Suzanne Hodsden
with a plaque noting her achievement.
The Media Resources Center at Wichita State University is pleased to announce Suzanne
Hodsden as the 2012 winner of the annual Carol & Elton Holman Screenwriting Competition.
Suzanne’s winning screenplay, Alexandra the Almost, focuses on a young girl who, while trying to navigate her way through a difficult
life, finds the assistance of man with miraculous powers that the world isn't ready
to accept.
Suzanne Hodsden is from Akron, Ohio. She studied for her BA in screenwriting at Denison University, interning as a script reader in Los Angeles during the summer of 2001. After graduation, she worked as a production assistant for the Showtime Original Movie, Speak shot in Columbus, Ohio. For reasons inexplicable to friends and family, she packed up and moved to Eastern Europe in 2004. Though by day she was an ESL instructor, she moonlighted as an actress in a few short films in Prague and eventually as an assistant to Romanian documentary filmmaker Dieter Auner in Bra»ôov. Currently, she is a GTA at Wichita State University, where she teaches English 102 and is an MFA candidate in Fiction.
Currently the Holman Competition is not active. The following is for informational purposes only.
Criteria:
- The entrant must be a WSU student, undergraduate or graduate, enrolled in at least three credit hours for the Spring semester.
- The screenplay must be typed and submitted in a film format, as a Word file to mark.porcaro@wichita.edu. (Click here for a sample page and formatting rules.)
- The preferred format is drama (e.g., comedy, suspense, Film Noir, romance, etc.) The preferred length is 15 to 30 pages. The judges are not looking for a feature-length script. Scripts will be judged on plot, character development, dialogue, visual and audio cues, proper screenplay formatting, grammar, and spelling.
Deadline:
Submissions not open currently. The judges retain the right not to give an award.
Questions?
Contact Mark Porcaro at extension 7787 or mark.porcaro@wichita.edu
Previous Winners:
1998 - Jason Bailey
2000 - Daxton Spencer
2001 - Ryan Doom
2002 - Kasey Phinney
2006 - Lee Whitman
2007 - Robert Dodrill
2008 - Tyler Emerson & Robert Dodrill (Two winners chosen)
2011 - Luke Geddes
2012 - Suzanne Hodsden
Background:
For 22 years Carol Holman was the founding director of WSU’s Media Resources Center. Following the deaths of Carol and her husband Elton, their estate established an endowed fund for the MRC, and the decision was made to recognize their contributions to education and the arts by creating a Screenwriting Competition. While Mrs. Holman began the MRC with an inventory of 16mm film projectors—modest in comparison to today’s collection of DVD players, plasma screens, and laptop computers—she would recognize that a solid script is still the foundation for effective storytelling, no matter what the medium.