Elevating Exceptional Women
and Nonbinary Screenwriters 40+
The Beginning
In 2015 in New York City, we gathered a group of women over 40 – writers, directors, actors, producers. Collectively, we were baffled and angered by the lack of content and representation in movies. We knew that there was no shortage of talent and material. Everything starts with the script, so we decided to create a platform and pipeline for exceptional writers. We wrote to Meryl Streep to ask for help, and she answered
We Are Mission Driven
To ignite the power of women screenwriters over 40 and activate the media industry decision makers to produce content by, for and about women across visual platforms
The Writers Lab discovers and develops well crafted scripts, in all genres, exploring universal themes, that expand the cultural narrative and strengthen our ties to one another. It is critical that we amplify the voices of women and nonbinary writers in their prime whose stories have not been told.
A TWL Original Study: 2026
In an examination of the top 500 U.S. features produced, three facts stood out:
→ Only 12% had a woman over 40 on the writing team.
→ Only 21% hired a woman screenwriter of any age
→ As for “auteur” writer/directors, 47% were men while only 9% were women.
The result? Female protagonists, especially those over 40, remain grossly underrepresented or misrepresented on screens, which ripples into global cultural discourse and directly informs which stories move forward.
Women 40+ are 25% of the world population and rising. We influence the majority of household spending, including leisure and entertainment, and we’re hungry for content that reflects our realities, interests, experience.
Women 40+ have unique, exciting stories to tell.
Our first year, when we opened submissions, we got 3,500 scripts of a staggering variety. We had tapped a nerve.
We get scripts about marriages, jobs, heists, war, space travel, vampires and zombies, deities and demons, but from an angle you haven’t seen before. The astronauts who orbited around the far side of the moon and saw earth differently? That’s us. That’s our writers.
Twelve years later we still get over a thousand scripts a year—that’s a thousand women who have put a hundred hours into a 30- or 60- or 100-page script. That’s 100,000 hours represented. From people juggling parents, children, and jobs. That’s drive. That’s passion.
The Writers Lab honors its ten years as a signature NYWIFT program.
As of October 1, 2024, The Writers Lab Inc is an independent 501(c)(3)
organization and is no longer legally associated with NYWIFT.