Episodic Lab 2023
We are thrilled to announce the four writers selected for our 2023 Episodic Lab! These creatives bring with them a dynamic and diverse range of stories and experiences. We’re confident they will elevate not only their own work but each other’s work as well during our time together in Nosara!
Nia Ashley is a writer, producer, and media artist born and based in Brooklyn. Nia’s work explores relationships between queer and queered women with chaotic bisexual energy. Her feature, BLACK SWAN RECORDS, garnered a screenplay award at the Tribeca Film Festival. She has written and produced several short films including CUIDATE which won the National Board of Review Student Grant. Her stage plays debuted at Playwrights Horizons and The Tank.
In her project, THICK, Lottie, an aspiring photographer and avid party girl, struggles to keep the studio she inherited from her sister while battling her hedonistic impulses and ever worsening bulimia.
Matt Black has sold, optioned, or been hired to write nearly a dozen feature films and has developed three TV shows with veteran showrunners and major studios, selling one in a competitive bid in 2017. He has produced two feature films. The first premiered in Dramatic Competition at SXSW in 2019 and was distributed in 2020. The second, which was produced with Sam Raimi for Sony Pictures and starred Sandra Oh, was released theatrically in 2022.
About his project, A PLACE IN THE MIND: When a content moderator hired to scrub the internet of its most horrific imagery unwittingly opens a gateway to a supernatural world, he must battle an evil non-human entity in order to preserve his sanity and save those he loves.
Justin Geldzahler is a writer and filmmaker focused on genre stories that double as emotionally grounded dramedies about people struggling to connect. He recently wrote and directed his first feature, the horror-cringe comedy GLUE TRAP, and consulted on the new seasons of SUCCESSION and EUPHORIA for HBO. In addition to making a bunch of short films, he has researched for and contributed to THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, FOSSE/VERDON, OUTLANDER, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, and RESPECT.
His project, BEARS IN HUMAN SUITS, is an animated comedy about a family of bears on a secret mission to infiltrate the human race... only for them to lose focus as suburban routine forces them to grapple with their own neuroses.
Ria Tobaccowala is a writer and director whose short films have premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and been distributed on HBO. Her narrative essay, "The Patriot Act and Me" was published in New York Magazine. In the television industry, she's worked on shows such as PACHINKO and ALASKA DAILY, and launched the Thousand Miles Project, a writing incubator for Asian and Pacific Islander stories in partnership with showrunner Soo Hugh and NBCUniversal.
Her project IMPERIAL VALLEY follows two immigrants from opposite sides of the world who come together to find their place and purpose in the American West, but face relentless challenges to their legitimacy and oppressive forces working against their ranch and family.
