By Nicole Torres AB '11

In the #HWire blog's "Where Are They Now?" series, we check in with Harvardwood program alums to find out what they've been up to and to showcase their accomplishments since participating with Harvardwood! 

Past Harvardwood Writers Competition winners, writing team Kathleen Chen AB '09 and Brian Polk AB '09, are staffed on upcoming NBC comedy Great News! The single-camera comedy is executive produced by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock AB '95.

Q. Did you always want to pursue careers as television writers? Tell us a bit about how you got started with writing.

KC. I never thought I’d be a TV writer, I just knew I liked to write and figured I’d wind up being a copywriter at an ad agency or something. After graduating, I moved to San Francisco to work in tech, and did a very different kind of writing—first I wrote help center articles at Google and for YouTube, then marketing and product copy at Pinterest. It wasn’t until I saw some of our friends start working in TV that I started believing that it was a real job that people could have.

BP. I was mostly a performer and did a lot of theater growing up, which drew me to improv, which drew to sketch, until one snowy NYC December I wrote a packet for a ten-week job at MTV2 and got it.

By Nicole Torres

Becky James AB '07 uses humor, violence, and fragmentation to explore the fringes of narrative. She has exhibited animation and installation at galleries including James Fuentes, Recess Art, Venus LA, and Primetime. She has also participated in dozens of film festivals including SXSW (three-time award winner), Slamdance, Animation Block Party (audience award), Newport Beach, and International Film Festival Rotterdam. A native New Yorker, James graduated from Harvard in 2007 and received her MFA from Bard in 2014.

Q. How did you get started with animation?

A. I got started with making animation at Harvard. I had gone to Harvard doing science and math. I was very committed to science, and much to my parents chagrin, took an animation class my freshman year and felt like it changed the way I saw everything at all times and it felt really empowering. Suddenly everything had the possibility to behave in a surprising way, and it felt really exciting. It also felt like there was so much territory to cover.