2024 New Voices Fellows & Mentors

LUCAS’S MENTOR: MATT HARRIS

Leading a nomadic life -- moving as a teenager from Chicago to Indonesia, Singapore and Venezuela -- gave screenwriter Matt Harris an indelible perspective on the nature of human relationships; in particular, how unique, individual experience can be expressed to reveal universal themes.

Born in Texas, Harris graduated from Cal State University Bakersfield, majoring in English and received his Master’s in American Literature from San Diego State University. His fascination with storytelling led him to move to Los Angeles to pursue a career in screenwriting. His first feature, The Starling, won a Humanitas Prize in 2022. Starring Melissa McCarthy, Academy Award Winner Kevin Kline and Chris O’Dowd, the script began as a nagging awareness of nature's indifference to human suffering but we, the victims of that indifference, struggle to accept that. The idea evolved into a story of an inexplicable tragedy that befalls a couple. Torn apart by this event, they are forced to reconcile their grief and seek a way forward if they are to share a future together. Harris wrote the script, named to the Blacklist, with the prize money he won from the prestigious Academy Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting for his western, Moon of Popping Trees, which was produced as Dead for a Dollar starring Emmy Winner Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), Willem Dafoe and Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz, directed by Walter Hill (Aliens, 48 Hrs.)

In addition to screenwriting, Harris has worked for several years producing television. He started as a production assistant on network dramas until landing his first writing job a the reality TV series for Fox Network. Later, he moved on to produce television for Travel Channel, Nickelodeon, History Channel, Tru TV, and lastly, MTV. While at MTV, Harris became showrunner of their hit series Ridiculousness, one of the longest running shows on the network.

Presently, Harris lives in Los Angeles and is working on his next script. 

GEORGE PERÉZ

PROJECT: El Titán | 60-Minute Pilot

LOGLINE: In economically distressed 2008 Cuba, the island’s finest baseball star faces a lifetime ban as punishment for his brother’s unsuccessful defection. He must decide whether to stay and suffer increased punishment from a vengeful, authoritarian government or risk a life-threatening escape to America with his pregnant wife.

BIO: Bilingual, Cuban-American George Pérez is a prior Sundance Latine Fellowship recipient, a 2024 Film Independent Imaginar TV Incubator for Fearless Latinx Creators Fellow and now, a proud 2024 Humanitas New Voices Fellow. George’s social justice-themed television projects shine a light on the issues of child sexual-exploitation and juvenile justice reform in America. George is compelled to explore themes of freedom from oppression, redemption and the strength to be one’s true self in the face of intolerance.

GEORGE’S MENTOR: MARTÍN ZIMMERMAN

Martín Zimmerman is a bilingual, Latinx screenwriter and playwright. Martín was the creator/showrunner of the Spanish-language Netflix series Puerta 7, a writer/producer on Netflix’s Ozark and Apple TV’s Surface, and a staff writer on Netflix’s Narcos and has been nominated for 2 Emmys and 2 WGA Awards.

His plays have been produced or developed at The Kennedy Center, Goodman Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse In The Park, Hartford Stage, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Alley Theatre, Roundabout Underground, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh), LCT3, New York Theatre Workshop, Teatro Galpón (Montevideo, Uruguay), Victory Gardens Theater, Milwaukee Rep, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Marin Theatre Company, The Playwrights’ Center, Alliance Theatre, A.C.T. (Seattle), PlayPenn, The Theatre @ Boston Court, Primary Stages, Teatro Vista, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Playwrights Foundation, and Seven Devils Playwrights Conference among others. 

His work as a playwright has received the Terrence McNally New Play Award, Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award Citation, Humanitas Prize New Voices Award, Sky Cooper New American Play Prize, McKnight Advancement Grant, Jerome Fellowship, Carl Djerassi Playwriting Fellowship, Scotsman Fringe First Award, and the National New Play Network’s Smith Prize.

He holds an MFA in Playwriting from The University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Theater Studies, BS in Economics from Duke University.

MADS SUMMERFIELD

PROJECT: Sideshow | 60-Minute Pilot

LOGLINE: A long-haul trucker quits her job to join her Carnie boyfriend and his kids for a promising carnival season, but when tragedy strikes the family, she is left with the impossible task of keeping the show on the road.

BIO: Born and raised in New York, Mads pursued screenwriting from an early age and took her first STORY seminar with Robert McKee while still in High School. She graduated from Emerson College with a BA in film. Her first feature was a 2021 Golden Script semi-finalist and her second feature, a collaboration with her creative partner, is a 2024 CineStory semi-finalist. Mads lives in Los Angeles with her partner and two cats. She’s an avid hiker and loves exploring California.

MADS’S MENTOR: MOLLIE SMITH METZLER

Molly Smith Metzler is an Emmy-nominated playwright and screenwriter from Kingston, New York. She is the creator, writer, and executive producer of the limited series Maid (Netflix), which was nominated for three Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, two Critics Choice Awards, two TCA Awards, The Humanitas Prize, and more. Maid was on the Netflix Top 10 list for 14 weeks and won a “TV Program of the Year” nod from AFI (American Film Institute ) as well as the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award for Outstanding Writing of a Limited Series–Adapted Long Form. Before Maid, Metzler spent four years working as a writer/producer on Shameless (Showtime) and also wrote for Casual (Hulu) and Orange Is the New Black (Netflix). Metzler studied playwrighting at NYU Tisch and The Juilliard School, and her plays – including Cry it Out, Elemeno Pea, and The May Queen – have been produced across the country and have won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Playwrighting, the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award Citation, the Lecomte du Nouy Prize from Lincoln Center, and more. Currently, Metzler is in production on Sirens, her forthcoming Netflix limited series starring Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon, Meghann Fahy, Milly Alcock, and Bill Camp. Sirens is the first series Metzler has created under her multi-year overall deal with Netflix. It will air in Spring 2025.

KIM LEE WINSLOW

PROJECT: Verve | 60-Minute Pilot

LOGLINE: In the vein of The Americans and Homeland, two unlikely North Korean lovers-turned-exiles manage to hustle their way out, armed with knowledge of traditional silk-making and some realpolitik only to find themselves caught in a tricky love triangle with the white American fast fashion CEO who orchestrates their escape. Freedom promises as much peril as deliverance once they make it to the land of dreams, Los Angeles.

BIO: Seoul-born Kim Lee Winslow emigrated to Los Angeles at the age of 4 as part of a strictly traditional and Baptist family. After living a split screen life, she did her senior undergraduate year abroad in Paris where she wrote her first play in French. Afterwards, she moved to New York and was awarded the Van Lier Playwriting Fellowship for Ancestors at New York Theater Workshop as well as a Jerome Foundation Grant. This play was later published by Yale University Press. Her play WORTH was produced by Genesius Theater Group off-Broadway and was an original commission from the Mark Taper Forum’s Asian Theatre Workshop. She is the recipient of writing residencies at Hedgebrook and MacDowell Arts Colony, and is a permanent artistic associate at New York Theater Workshop and the Ma-Yi Writers Group. After getting her MFA degree from the Yale School of Drama and leaving the East Coast, Kim sold her 1-hour drama show Loyal to Sony Pictures Television and Freeform. She is a 2025 Humanitas New Voices Fellow and was a finalist for the Inevitable Foundation's Accelerator Fellowship. Now writing short stories in addition to creating television shows and features, Kim lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.

KIM’S MENTOR: ALEX GANZA

Alex Gansa was the showrunner, executive producer, and co-creator of the Emmy award winning television series Homeland, which ended its eight-season run in April 2020.

In addition to winning five Golden Globes and eight Emmys, including Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series, Homeland also won the 2011 Peabody Award, received three WGA awards in the categories of Best New Series and Writing for an Episodic Drama, and was named one of AFI’s Ten Programs of the Year five years in a row. Altogether, Homeland achieved more than 60 wins and 175 nominations.

Gansa previously served as an Executive Producer on the long-running series 24, the CBS series NUMB3RS, the ABC series Beauty and the Beast, and WB’s Dawson's Creek, as well as a Consulting Producer on HBO’s Entourage.  He staffed for two years on the hit series The X Files and created the critically acclaimed ABC series Maximum Bob.

In 2019, Gansa and his long-time collaborator, Howard Gordon, formed GansaGordon Productions, where they are currently developing new television series in collaboration with Sony Pictures Entertainment.