Event

The Hartman Family Screenwriting Series allows us to host an annual event with a successful professional screenwriter so that aspiring moviemakers in the Writers House community can get a taste of the writers' room. Past events in the series have featured Scott Neustadter (500 Days of Summer, The Fault in our Stars) and John Leguizamo (Ice Age, Romeo + Juliet).

ALEC SOKOLOW, nominated for an Academy Award (Toy Story) has worn many hats in his career as a professional writer. A career in Hollywood has taken him from writing late night TV comedy to having written some of the most memorable studio films of our time. His credited film work has topped one billion dollars in worldwide Box Office receipts and includes Toy Story, Cheaper by the Dozen, Garfield, Evan Almighty, Daddy Day Camp, and Money Talks. Alec hails from New York City and resides in Sagaponack, NY.

KATHLEEN DEMARCO VAN CLEVE is a novelist, screenwriter, film producer and teacher. She is currently adapting the Young Readers edition of the 2017 National Book finalist Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar for Aladdin Books / Simon & Schuster, due to be published in 2019. She is also working on a film adaptation of the Wesley Stace novel Charles Jessold: Considered as a Murderer and her own young adult book series, Hurricane Ike. With Aline Brosh McKenna as producer, (showrunner, My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and screenwriter, The Devil Wears Prada), Van Cleve is also working on an original screenplay currently entitled I'm With Her. Her middle grade novel, Drizzle, received starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and The Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books, and won the Pennsylvania students' choice award for best middle-grade novel. For many years, she was the creative partner of actor and writer John Leguizamo, during which time she produced the films Joe the King, (winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival), Pinero, (a Miramax release starring Benjamin Bratt) and Undefeated (an HBO film starring Leguizamo) as well as worked with Steven Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower), Alexander Payne (Sideways, Election, Downsizing) and Frank Pugliese (showrunner, House of Cards). Her other novels are Cranberry Queen (optioned by Miramax Films) and The Difference Between You and Me. She graduated with a dual degree from the Wharton School and the College of Arts & Sciences, was captain of Penn women's crew, and lives with her husband and two sons in Philadelphia.