Thursday, April 27th 5pm PT / 8pm ET (virtual)

At this virtual masterclass, attendees will learn the art of how to prepare materials and pitch an original (pilot) script. Giovanni McEastland will share insight on preparation guidelines across writer portfolio building, storytelling, and notes on transitioning from aspiring to professional writer.

Giovanni McEastland (GIO) is a writer by trade and is a father, son and problem solver by mandate. GIO began to hone his skills as a writer via Columbia College Chicago Writing for Television Intensive as well as in depth scene study/ character building within the University of Southern California (Scene Dock) school of Theater. He has gained work experience as a Writers Assistant on Network Series and has been afforded fortunate opportunities to pitch original pilots to major television studios. GIO has successfully pitched original story materials to networks i.e. Disney, CBS, and NICKELODEON. GIO not only writes for the screenplay but also music. He is accredited as a writer and composer for the film score and soundtrack for documentary ‘Basketball County: In The Water’ produced by SHOWTIME, NBA Superstar Kevin Durant and Thirty5 Ventures. GIO embraces all of life's experiences and uses them as a catalyst to create relatable content. Currently Giovanni works in Talent Development and Artist Management at Nickelodeon Animation while also remaining on roster as a freelance writer for the studio.  

Register for this event at the link below. Harvardwood members, friends, and non-members are ALL welcome, but every attendee must register for themselves individually. So if you're inviting others to join you for this panel, please forward them the link to this page so they can sign themselves up. Thank you!

Members, Register Here

Purchase ticket   $5.50 Members & Friends, and Craft Services Members

Register for this event at the link below. Harvardwood members, friends, and non-members are ALL welcome, but every attendee must register for themselves individually. So if you're inviting others to join you for this panel, please forward them the link to this page so they can sign themselves up. Thank you!

Members, Register Here

Purchase ticket   $5.50 Members & Friends

Ruth Mulan Chu Chao Harvardwood AAPI Artist Fellowship

Harvardwood is pleased to announce the inaugural Ruth Mulan Chu Chao Harvardwood AAPI Artist Fellowship for artists who are Harvard University alumni (or students expecting their degree in May 2023) and identify as Asian American Pacific Islander. The purpose of the Fellowship is to develop, elevate and amplify AAPI voices and stories. The gift, generously donated by Angela Chao (AB ‘95, MBA ‘01) in honor of her mother, Ruth Mulan Chu Chao, will support one or more artists as they pursue their creative projects over the course of a year.

Mrs. Ruth Mulan Chu Chao was a philanthropist, mother of six daughters, and lifelong advocate for equitable education. Like her namesake, Chinese folk heroine Hua Mulan, Mrs. Chao faced adversity with extraordinary grace, courage, and determination. In 2016 she became the first woman and Asian American to have a building named in her honor at Harvard University.

Angela Chao, Mrs. Chao’s youngest daughter and CEO of Foremost Group, states: "My mother was an inspiration to my sisters and me. She worked very hard and made many sacrifices to support her daughters' educations and potential in life. It is my hope that this fellowship will help honor her legacy and inspire others to embrace her values and generosity.  She would have been proud to support a cause that provides opportunities for AAPI students to make their voices heard and break down barriers as an important step toward celebrating and protecting our heritage and the Asian American Pacific Islander community.”

The inaugural Chao Harvardwood Fellow(s) will be announced by May 31, 2023, and the Fellowship will run from June 1, 2023 through May 31, 2024. The total amount of grant funding for the year is $10,000 (more than one Fellow may be named, and individual award sizes may vary). Grant funds can be used at the grantee’s discretion in support of their creative work for the duration of the Fellowship period. Applicants may be at any stage of their career, and there is no restriction on the artistic discipline; musicians, dancers, visual artists, actors, comedians, writers, filmmakers and artists/creators in all mediums are encouraged to apply.

Each Fellow will receive additional guidance and assistance through Harvardwood via programs, resources, and access to the wider Harvardwood network during their fellowship year.

Harvardwood Founder Mia Riverton Alpert (AB ‘99) said, "Angela Chao has long been a champion for the arts and the AAPI community. This generous and impactful Fellowship in honor of her mother, Mrs. Ruth Mulan Chu Chao, continues a legacy of extraordinary leadership and demonstrates a deep commitment to supporting AAPI artists, bringing their rich and diverse stories to global audiences."

The Fellowship selection committee is comprised of Harvardwood board members, other industry professionals, and/or Harvard University staff with expertise in various artistic disciplines.

2023-24 Eligibility

To apply, individuals must identify as AAPI, be Harvard University alumni or expect to receive their degree in May 2023 (i.e. in their final few months of an undergraduate or graduate program), complete the application form, provide a resume, a work sample or portfolio, an introductory video, an artist statement (in written, audio, or video format), a letter of recommendation, a creative plan with an overview of envisioned projects to be completed or substantially developed during the term of the Fellowship, and a projected budget indicating how grant funds would be used for the term of the Fellowship. The finalist round may include a virtual interview. Individuals who have previously been beneficiaries of Harvardwood grants or scholarships or have participated in Harvardwood programs are eligible if they meet the other terms of eligibility.

Applications will be accepted starting on March 1, 2023 and will be due April 30, 2023, with the recipient(s) announced in May 2023. Unless Fellowship funds need to be utilized at a particular time for project-related expenses, funds will be distributed quarterly to the Chao Harvardwood Fellow(s) beginning in June 2023 and ending in May 2024.

Apply HERE.

VANAS

VANAS is a leading educational institution educating aspiring artists in the diverse disciplines that form the Animation, Visual Effects, and Video Game industries. We empower the artists to empower their art.

Our Manifesto
We believe in education for employment, in teaching innovative skills that lead to creative careers resulting in personal and professional fulfillment. As a result, we developed a fantastic school with strong educational programs that welcome you, work for you, and care for you.

Our Faculty
Industry teachers working at studios like Disney, Pixar, Sony, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, and others at the time of teaching.

Harvardwood x VANAS

Bennett Singer AB '86 is an award-winning producer/director/writer whose films have been screened at The Smithsonian, The United Nations, The British Museum, and the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. His latest documentary, Cured, directed with Patrick Sammon, opened the 2021–22 season of PBS' acclaimed documentary showcase Independent Lens and has garnered more than 20 awards and accolades, including a 2022 Emmy nomination, the American Historical Association's John E. O'Connor Film Award for best historical documentary, the Jonathan Daniels Award, and a $50,000 award in the Library of Congress Lavine/Burns Prize for Film. A feature film based on Cured is currently in development, and a classroom edition is being produced in partnership with History UnErased. Singer previously co-directed Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, a "potent and persuasive piece of historical rediscovery" (Los Angeles Times) that premiered at Sundance, aired nationally on PBS' POV series, and won the GLAAD Media Award; and Electoral Dysfunction, a "frightening and enlightening documentary" (WBEZ Radio) that "lives up to its title" (New York Times). Hosted by political humorist Mo Rocca, the film aired nationally on PBS and won the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award; a classroom edition was distributed free of charge to more than 20,000 educators. Singer won a duPont-Columbia Award for his work on Eyes on the Prize II, the landmark PBS series on the history of the civil rights movement. The former executive editor of TIME Magazine's education program, he has written curriculum materials to accompany dozens of film projects, including The Laramie Project and Band of Brothers for HBO and The Diary of Anne Frank for PBS Masterpiece. Singer is also the author or editor of five books, including 42 Up, the companion volume to Michael Apted's documentary series; and The Student Body, a "wry, insider thriller" (Village Voice) that he wrote with three Harvard classmates. Learn more about his work at www.bennettsinger.com.

Q: You are currently in the process of working with History UnErased to produce a “Classroom Edition” of your most recent documentary, Cured, for use in high school social studies and psychology classes. You’ve done this before for your documentary Electoral Dysfunction. What is that editing process like? How do you decide what to keep and what to cut? As the former executive editor of TIME Magazine's education program, how do you think that influences what you do now?

The first step is to talk with teachers — and students — to hear their thoughts and questions. Based on their very helpful comments, we then move into a ruthless editing process in which we cut the film down from feature length to about 30 minutes so that it can be shown and discussed in a single class period. Stripping away everything that’s extraneous to the central story and themes results in a streamlined version of the narrative. One thing I came to understand during my eight years at TIME is that teachers really appreciate access to primary-source documents. In the case of Electoral Dysfunction, we created a 128-page curriculum guide that includes literacy tests, a range of ballots, political cartoons, and excerpts from the constitutions of other countries (along with four short videos that we produced for the New York Times Op-Docs series). We raised $200,000 in grant money to be able to give free copies of the Electoral Dysfunction teaching kit to more than 20,000 teachers, and we partnered with several organizations, including the National Council for the Social Studies, on distribution and professional development sessions for teachers. It has been immensely gratifying to visit classrooms and to see the kinds of discussion, reflection, and engagement that these materials spark.

Q: Your film Electoral Dysfunction, which aired nationally on PBS and won the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award, is hosted by political humorist Mo Rocca, also a Harvard grad. You also co-wrote The Student Body with three Harvard classmates. Do you find yourself often collaborating with fellow alums?

I do! Mo Rocca ’91 is a national treasure, and it was a joy to work with him on the voting film, which was structured as a road trip in which Mo sets out to discover how voting works (or doesn’t work) in America. I also loved co-authoring The Student Body — a thriller, published by Random House, about a prostitution ring at Harvard — with Faith Adiele, Michael Melcher, and Julia Sullivan, three friends from the class of 1986. (As Harvard Magazine put it in a racy review, that book “gives new meaning to the idea of getting into Harvard.”) Victoria Bassetti ’86 wrote the excellent companion book to Electoral Dysfunction; and beyond that, I had the pleasure of working with Ellen Reeves ’83, Carol Cashion ’83, and the late Lisa Quiroz ’83 as colleagues at TIME’s education program, and with Ellen Reeves on several other projects, including Garda's Lieutenant, a theatrical work that received an A.R.T. Alumni Lab/Harvardwood grant to support its development.

Q: Speaking of co-writing, in addition to all of your remarkable documentary work, you’ve also written/edited five books. How do you find that medium as functioning differently from the visual medium of film/TV?

After my freshman year, I worked with Diane Wachtell ’83 as assistant editor of the first edition of Let's Go: California and the Pacific Northwest. Diane went on to become Executive Director of The New Press, and I’ve done several book projects for her. She commissioned me to edit an anthology for LGBTQ young people and to edit the companion volume to Michael Apted’s 42 UP; more recently, my husband David Deschamps and I co authored LGBTQ Stats, an almanac of facts and figures on the ongoing LGBTQ revolution. We really strove to cover a lot of ground with that project, and it meant a lot when Professor M.V. Lee Badgett of UCLA’s Williams Institute described the book as “the most comprehensive portrait of LGBTQ life around.” I think I have finally come to understand that as a general rule, films have the strongest impact when they are visceral, emotional, and sparing on facts and narration; books, on the other hand, are the ideal medium to convey copious amounts of information — in the case of our Stats book, more than 10,000 facts, all lovingly footnoted.

Q: Do you feel that your work has thematic elements, or messages, that you’ve consistently tried to either consciously or subconsciously incorporate? Both in documentary filmmaking and as an author?

While my films and books address a broad range of topics — including civil and human rights, voter suppression, and LGBTQ equality and visibility — they are united thematically by their focus on activists striving to bring about systemic change. Cured is a good example of that: it’s the story of a surprising and unexpected David-versus-Goliath victory that transformed the social fabric of America. As you can imagine, I’m thrilled that a feature film based on Cured is now in development.

Q: In what ways did your time at Harvard influence the path you have taken since graduating?

As a sophomore, I took Diana Eck’s Core class on Indian civilization and followed that by spending the summer of 1984 on a program in India that brought together 20 Americans and 20 Indians to explore the legacy of Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence. That was a life-changing experience, and looking back, there was something miraculous about having the opportunity to be part of the team that created Eyes on the Prize (a 14-hour PBS series on the history of the civil rights movement). I started at Blackside, the Boston-based production company that produced Eyes, as an intern during the spring of my senior year (after seeing a posting at Harvard’s career office); what was supposed to be a two-month internship wound up becoming a full-time job that lasted for nearly five years and became my version of film school. I think that summer in India and that study of Gandhi’s revolution played an overarching role in motivating me to tell stories about activists who speak truth to power.

Q: What’s one documentary you think everyone should see in their life?

The Times of Harvey Milk, by Rob Epstein and the late Richard Schmiechen. I clearly remember seeing that astonishingly moving documentary when it came out in 1984. It was that film — along with Eyes on the Prize — that made me want to become a documentary filmmaker.

2 pm PT /5 pm ET (Virtual)

Danielle Parsons specializes in making small subjects larger than life. She creates documentary and video art using microscopes and macro setups. Whether it be floating through lightscapes inside a precious gem, surfing sound waves, or swimming with microbes, her directing work transports audiences to immersive worlds of pure beauty and wonder.

Danielle is the founder of Wonder Science, a Los Angeles-based production company and worldwide streaming app available on Roku, Apple TV, iOS, Android, and Fire TV players. The channel programming combines science and art, inviting viewers to see the unseen, and experience a flow state of relaxation and curiosity.

As a student at Harvard College, Danielle drew inspiration from scientists E.O. Wilson and Stephen Jay Gould. Her passion for film has taken her to some far flung places, from Kazakhstan to the Galapagos Islands. She has produced and directed content for TV and digital outlets such as The History Channel, Disney, WIRED, NPR, BBC, and Slate. Danielle's video art has exhibited at museums and galleries including SLOMA, IFP New Media Center, and the SPRING/BREAK art show, as well as on the blockchain as NFTs. She built a science museum in the metaverse. Festival audiences have watched her films at the Imagine Science Film Festival, Goethe Science Film Festival, and the Infinity Festival, among others. Danielle creates concert visuals and music videos for bands such as Metallica. Danielle is repped commercially by MAJORITY. She was rescued by a dog named Puzzle.

The power of a great story to educate, shed light on rarely discussed topics, and change hearts and minds draws millions of learners and storytellers to entertainment.

Produced in partnership with students from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Educators for Entertainment Speaker Series highlights leaders working at the intersection of education and entertainment who are using storytelling, media, and the arts to create educational impact around the world. 

Through this series, we hope to bring together Harvard students passionate about the magic that happens at the intersection of education and entertainment and strengthen the bridge between the two industries within the broader Harvard community. 

Register for this event at the link below. Harvardwood members, friends, and non-members are ALL welcome, but every attendee must register for themselves individually. So if you're inviting others to join you for this panel, please forward them the link to this page so they can sign themselves up. Thank you!

Members, Friends of Harvardwood, and Current HGSE students: Register Here

Purchase ticket  $1 for Members, friends, HGSE current students

Non-Member Ticket Options

To attend all 5 events of the Entertainment for Educators series, Register Here

Purchase ticket  $15 for access to all 5 events of the Entertainment for Educators series

2 pm PT /5 pm ET (Virtual)

NAIA CUCUKOV - EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, DEVELOPMENT AND PRODUCTION, FILM & TELEVISION

Naia Cucukov is a dynamic, innovative and conscientious executive with over sixteen years of experience in the entertainment business. Naia has a passion for identifying inclusive, uplifting and inspiring projects in order to help them grow into movie and television magic.

A native of southern New Jersey, Naia grew up loving film and ultimately discovered her affinity for production while receiving her B.A. in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University. Like many entertainment executives before her, Naia started in Hollywood as an assistant at CAA, followed by a post at Legendary Pictures. She then made the transition into the role of Creative Executive at Bold Films followed by the opportunity to work with Sir Richard Branson as the Director of Development at Virgin Produced. While at Virgin, Naia oversaw creative programing for the Virgin Produced Channel onboard Virgin Airlines and co-produced the award-winning short film Departure Date – the first film shot on a plane and edited while 35,000 feet in the air.

Since her start at Walden Media in 2013, Naia has cultivated a diverse slate of films and television projects. On behalf of Walden, she has overseen development and production for: The Giver, based on the bestselling book by Lois Lowry; Universal and Working Title’s Everest, based on the true story of the 1996 Everest disaster; Disney’s The BFG, a Steven Spielberg-directed adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved novel; A Dog’s Purpose and A Dog's Journey, parts one and two of the beloved series by W. Bruce Cameron; Sony Animation’s The Star; Lionsgate’s Wonder, based on the bestselling middle-grade novel, Paramount's live action Dora the Explorer and Playing with Fire starring John Cena. Naia has executive produced the critically and commercially acclaimed series, The Baby-Sitters Club, for which she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's and Family Viewing Series.

Other Producing/Executive Producing credits include: A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting with Netflix; the Tom Hank’s starring sci-fi film, Finch, with Amblin and Apple TV; and Rumble, an animated feature from Paramount Animation/Paramount Plus. Her next release will be the limited series, Manhunt, with Apple TV. Additionally, Naia starred in the Netflix documentary, The Claudia Kishi Club, which reflected on the impact of Claudia Kishi in the Asian-American community. 

Naia actively vocalizes her impact in the industry as the Vice Chair of CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment), a creator of the AAPI female empowerment group, A+, and is a member of the Television Academy, the PGA and Women in Film. She spends her free time with her daughter, Anya, husband Peter and miniature dachshund, Sharky.

The power of a great story to educate, shed light on rarely discussed topics, and change hearts and minds draws millions of learners and storytellers to entertainment.

Produced in partnership with students from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Educators for Entertainment Speaker Series highlights leaders working at the intersection of education and entertainment who are using storytelling, media, and the arts to create educational impact around the world. 

Through this series, we hope to bring together Harvard students passionate about the magic that happens at the intersection of education and entertainment and strengthen the bridge between the two industries within the broader Harvard community. 

Register for this event at the link below. Harvardwood members, friends, and non-members are ALL welcome, but every attendee must register for themselves individually. So if you're inviting others to join you for this panel, please forward them the link to this page so they can sign themselves up. Thank you!

Members, Friends of Harvardwood, and Current HGSE students: Register Here

Purchase ticket  $1 for Members, friends, HGSE current students

Non-Member Ticket Options

To attend all 5 events of the Entertainment for Educators series, Register Here

Purchase ticket  $15 for access to all 5 events of the Entertainment for Educators series

2 pm PT /5 pm ET (Virtual)

Mark Kassen is the founder of Like Minded Media Ventures and co-founder of the civic engagement platform A Starting Point (ASP). He is a Golden Globe and Emmy nominated filmmaker, playwright and actor. Mark has a history of cultivating new filmmaking technology, utilizing it to create the Trigger Street Independent film fund with Dana Brunetti. In four years, TSI’s films garnered 11 Emmys and 4 Golden Globes.

Kassen’s Like Minded Media Ventures is the parent company of Like Minded Entertainment and Like Minded Labs, bringing together talent and technology to empower, create and connect. The innovative tech venture is led by artists, engineers, technologists, and humanitarians from a range of acclaimed organizations and companies across the globe.

His feature film directing and producing credits include Puncture starring Chris Evans, Bernard and Doris starring Ralph Fiennes and Susan Sarandon for HBO, and Chris Evans’s Before We Go. Mark has produced and been showrunner of multiple scripted, reality and documentary series across networks such as FOX TELEVISION, MTV, IFC, AMC and SUNDANCE CHANNEL. Mark also starred in the Tony Award winning Broadway production of The Last Night of Ballyhoo, as well as wrote and starred in the critically acclaimed off-Broadway, multi–media play Little Willy.

The power of a great story to educate, shed light on rarely discussed topics, and change hearts and minds draws millions of learners and storytellers to entertainment.

Produced in partnership with students from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Educators for Entertainment Speaker Series highlights leaders working at the intersection of education and entertainment who are using storytelling, media, and the arts to create educational impact around the world. 

Through this series, we hope to bring together Harvard students passionate about the magic that happens at the intersection of education and entertainment and strengthen the bridge between the two industries within the broader Harvard community. 

Register for this event at the link below. Harvardwood members, friends, and non-members are ALL welcome, but every attendee must register for themselves individually. So if you're inviting others to join you for this panel, please forward them the link to this page so they can sign themselves up. Thank you!

Members, Friends of Harvardwood, and Current HGSE students: Register Here

Purchase ticket  $1 for Members, friends, HGSE current students

Non-Member Ticket Options

To attend all 5 events of the Entertainment for Educators series, Register Here

Purchase ticket  $15 for access to all 5 events of the Entertainment for Educators series

4 pm PT /7 pm ET (Virtual)

Dan’s work includes the Sundance, Peabody, and Emmy-winning documentary Nanking, which was shortlisted for an Academy Award, released theatrically, and then sold to HBO Documentary Films: Soundtrack for a Revolution, which was also shortlisted for an Academy Award, released theatrically, and broadcast on PBS; and the 9/11 documentary Twin Towers, which won an Oscar in 2003. His films have shown at festivals around the world, including Cannes, Sundance, Hong Kong, Hot Docs, and Tribeca, and have received special screenings at the White House, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.

The power of a great story to educate, shed light on rarely discussed topics, and change hearts and minds draws millions of learners and storytellers to entertainment.

Produced in partnership with students from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Educators for Entertainment Speaker Series highlights leaders working at the intersection of education and entertainment who are using storytelling, media, and the arts to create educational impact around the world. 

Through this series, we hope to bring together Harvard students passionate about the magic that happens at the intersection of education and entertainment and strengthen the bridge between the two industries within the broader Harvard community. 

Register for this event at the link below. Harvardwood members, friends, and non-members are ALL welcome, but every attendee must register for themselves individually. So if you're inviting others to join you for this panel, please forward them the link to this page so they can sign themselves up. Thank you!

Members, Friends of Harvardwood, and Current HGSE students: Register Here

Purchase ticket  $1 for Members, friends, HGSE current students

Non-Member Ticket Options

To attend all 5 events of the Entertainment for Educators series, Register Here

Purchase ticket  $15 for access to all 5 events of the Entertainment for Educators series

Loni Steele Sosthand AB '88 is currently a Co-Producer going into her third season on THE SIMPSONS. Prior to that, she was partnered with Jim Hope as Consulting Producers on Nickelodeon's COUSINS FOR LIFE. Loni has written for various multi-cam family comedies including LAB RATS, DOG WITH A BLOG and BEST FRIENDS WHENEVER. Loni also co-created, co-wrote, and co-produced KATRINA, a half-hour dramedy pilot for The-N (Teen Nick), executive produced by Warrington Hudlin.  Loni is a graduate of Harvard University where she wrote a novel for her honors thesis.  In addition to her writing life, Loni lives in Santa Clarita with her husband, a Stunt Coordinator/Stuntman, her ten-year-old triplets, two dogs, and one very abused minivan. 

Q: Congratulations on your recent trailblazing episode of The Simpsons, the first-ever episode featuring the use of ASL and the show’s first-ever deaf voice actors. How did you end up as a writer and executive story editor on the show?

Well… it was the summer of 2020, and our family, like most, was in the thick of pandemic related stress. My husband is a Stunt Coordinator and performer so his work is dependent on productions happening, and they were barely coming back.   The few that were would require him leaving us for months of quarantine apart.  Our triplets were going into the third grade and we were scrambling to figure out how to best assist their “at-home” schooling. Though I’d written on several multi-cam comedies over the years and built up my writer’s room experiences, I wasn’t staffed at the time.  With three kids, a mortgage, grocery bills and so much uncertainty, I began doing some on-line writing tutoring and started a graduate program in Psychology, finally initiating the Plan B career.  I hadn’t given up on my dreams, but I couldn’t just sit around and count on some out of the blue miracle like Al Jean and Matt Selman, the showrunners of The Simpsons reading my material (submitted by my agent), offering me a meeting and hiring me.  Then, in a merciful twist of fate, that is what happened.  

Q: What inspired the storyline of your episode “The Sound of Bleeding Gums”?  

When I became a The Simpsons' writer, I really wanted to tell a Bleeding Gums Murphy story because I loved that character so much from when I was a kid.  I’ve long been a jazz fan, and those early episodes with Bleeding Gums had such a delightfully bluesy sense of humor.  Of course, in pitching any idea for the thirty third season of The Simpsons there is a great challenge to do something new, while still honoring the legacy of the show.  So, in brainstorming ways to explore Bleeding Gums’ character with a fresh take, we talked about how Lisa might have missed out on some aspects of his life and not known her hero as well as she thought. That’s where the idea of her meeting his son, Monk Murphy, who happens to be deaf, came into play.  My brother Eli was born profoundly deaf, and so it excited me to get the opportunity to pay witness to some aspects of the deaf experience in the Simpsons world, something that hadn’t been done before.  My brother got a cochlear implant in his twenties and I was with him when he heard sound for the first time.  There were many moments surrounding that miraculous change in his life that were full of bluesy humor that fit into the tone of those early Bleeding Gums episodes. 

Because of my brother I was sensitive to how we represented this deaf character and knew we’d need a deaf voice actor for the role.  When we were still in the outlining phase of the episode, I told Al Jean about John Autry II who I had in mind to play the role of Monk Murphy.  I’d work[ed] with John over a decade earlier on a pilot I did for Nickelodeon when John was still a teenager.   John uses total communication, meaning he both signs and uses oral speech to communicate and he also got a cochlear implant in his twenties.  There is a moment in the episode when Monk gets his cochlear activated and hears the sound of his father’s music for the first time, and I think that John’s performance which draws on his personal experience, combined with the beautiful animation really makes it very poignant. 

Q: What was it like to work with your brother, Eli, who voiced one of the characters on this project? 

My brother and I have collaborated before on different projects and it’s an easy fit because we know each other so well.  I showed him early drafts of the script, mostly to get his approval for elements of the story that borrowed from his life.  There is a segment of the episode that shows how Bleeding Gums discovered that his son was born deaf that is directly drawn from how my parents discovered that Eli was born deaf.   As a baby he was napping when my father dropped pots and pans near his crib and when he didn’t wake up from the clatter they knew he couldn’t hear.  We animated [this] in the scene where Bleeding Gums comes home late at night with a bandmate who drops his cymbals in a loud clatter that doesn’t wake the baby.  After the show aired my brother expressed how moved he was by seeing that moment represented on The Simpsons. So, when it turned out we needed one more deaf voice in the episode it made sense to cast him.  He has, of course, bugged me ever since about when his character will return and perhaps carry an episode [arc]. 

Q: You talked a bit about the challenge of animating ASL for characters who only had four fingers– were there any other unexpected challenges or surprises that cropped up while you were creating this episode? 

Well, the challenges of drawing the ASL were mostly taken on by our wonderful animators. I do believe one of the animators had some knowledge of ASL, but we also sent clips of their animatics to several ASL experts.  I turned to two family friends: Michelle McAuliffe, a childhood friend who is a professor at Gallaudet, and Cindy Herbst, who is a professor of ASL and an interpreter at Cal State Northridge.   Both these women were generous with their time and happy to help as we sent drafts of the animation to them and made slight adjustments.  After the show aired I visited one of Michelle’s classes at Gallaudet (via Zoom) and it was a real honor to get to meet with her students and get their feedback.  I was deeply touched by what it meant to them to see ASL on The Simpsons, and I was also happy to hear their pitches for how to do it even better and more often. 

Q: How is writing for animation different from writing for human actors, if at all? Do you like one more than the other? Do you find writing for animation to be easier because cartoon characters have more flexibility in terms of what they can be made to do?

I just love how patient the process is in animation. It takes about a year from the original pitch to the airing of an episode, so there are a lot of opportunities to make improvements.  I love the collaborative discussions with the animators that come after the table read.  For example, for this episode I was able to send them many images for how to draw Monk’s hearing aids and later his cochlear implant.  And the moment when Monk gets his implant turned on for the first time is illustrated to show the musical notes coming off of his father’s album, entering the cochlear implant, and then lighting up Monk’s brain with memories and images of his father.  This is a beautiful moment conveyed through animation, that could only be drawn.

Q: In what ways did your time at Harvard influence the path you have taken since graduating?

I went to Harvard knowing that I wanted to be a writer, but I had no idea I’d write for television.  At the time my ambition was to be a novelist. I took as many creative writing classes as I could and got to study with Jamaica Kincaid and Jill McCorkle.   I was able to do a novel as my creative writing thesis and I went on to graduate school in the MFA program at UC Irvine.  As I struggled to finish the novel, I began writing scripts on the side just for fun.  Eventually the form of writing that I had the most fun doing took over the form I was most stressed about.    I participated in writing workshops at Harvardwood that really helped me get my early spec scripts in shape.  Those workshops were great opportunities to collaborate with other writers, many of whom have since gone on to have successful writing careers. 

Q: What advice do you have for young aspiring comedy writers? 

Get into or start a supportive writing group and use it to keep creating and revising your specs to get them in better and better shape. Rewriting is the main part of the job and collaborating is the other.  So, getting to workshop your work in a group setting is really good preparation for the writer’s room.    

Q: How do you like to spend your time when you’re not working?

When I’m not working it’s all about family time.  Our triplets are now ten years old and we are just trying to savor this particularly fun time in childhood.   

Loni's Simpson's episode of The Simpsons, "The Sound of Bleeding Gums", was released on April 10, 2022 and is available to stream now.