{{primary sources, date=September 2013
The Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards are bestowed annually by the Samuel Goldwyn Foundation, which is funded by a trust established by the Goldwyn family. Started in 1955, the awards are a competitive writing prize open to all
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
students. As of October, 2006, the first prize in the awards is $15,000.
While winners are unknown students when they receive the award, many go on to be prominent writers and filmmakers. Previous award winners include
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola (; ; born April 7, 1939) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is considered one of the major figures of the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Coppola is the recipient of five A ...
,
Allison Anders
Allison Anders (born November 16, 1954) is an American independent film director whose films include ''Gas Food Lodging'', ''Mi Vida Loca'' and ''Grace of My Heart''. Anders has collaborated with fellow UCLA School of Theater, Film and Televisio ...
Eric Roth
Eric R. Roth (born March 22, 1945) is an American screenwriter. He has been nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay — for ''Forrest Gump'' (1994), '' The Insider'' (1999), ''Munich'' (2005), '' The Curious Case of ...
,
James Robert Baker
James Robert Baker (October 18, 1947 – November 5, 1997) was an American author of sharply satirical, predominantly gay-themed transgressional fiction. A native Californian, his work is set almost entirely in Southern California. After gradua ...
Colin Higgins
Colin Higgins (28 July 1941 – 5 August 1988) was an Australian-American screenwriter, actor, director, and producer. He was best known for writing the screenplay for the 1971 film ''Harold and Maude'', and for directing the films '' Foul Play' ...
,
Pamela Gray
Pamela Gray (born 1956) is an American screenwriter.
Biography
Gray was raised in a Jewish family in New York City, the daughter of a salesman and a schoolteacher.
,
Carroll Ballard
Carroll Ballard (born October 14, 1937) is a retired American film director. He has directed six feature films, including ''The Black Stallion (film), The Black Stallion'' (1979), ''Never Cry Wolf (film), Never Cry Wolf'' (1983), and ''Fly Away ...
, and
Scott Rosenberg
Scott Rosenberg (born April 24, 1963) is an American screenwriter, film producer, and actor.
Life and career
Rosenberg was born in Needham, Massachusetts, to a Jewish family. After high school graduation in 1981, he attended Boston Universit ...
.
The final round of the awards are judged by prominent writers, directors, and entertainers, who have included Moss Hart,
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder (; ; born Samuel Wilder; June 22, 1906 – March 27, 2002) was an Austrian-American filmmaker. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Classic Holl ...
Sidney Poitier
Sidney Poitier ( ; February 20, 1927 – January 6, 2022) was an American actor, film director, and diplomat. In 1964, he was the first black actor and first Bahamian to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. He received two competitive ...
,
Denzel Washington
Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. (born December 28, 1954) is an American actor and filmmaker. He has been described as an actor who reconfigured "the concept of classic movie stardom". Throughout his career spanning over four decades, Washington ha ...
,
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Lee Hoffman (born August 8, 1937) is an American actor and filmmaker. As one of the key actors in the formation of New Hollywood, Hoffman is known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and emotionally vulnerable characters. He is th ...
A. Scott Berg
Andrew Scott Berg (born December 4, 1949) is an American biographer. After graduating from Princeton University in 1971, Berg expanded his senior thesis on editor Maxwell Perkins into a full-length biography, ''Max Perkins: Editor of Genius'' (1 ...
, and
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, visual artist and actor. A recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 2019, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and the César Award for Be ...