Your Options on Options

Inspired by beloved components of PEN America’s Emerging Voices Fellowship and Humanitas’s New Voices Fellowship, this workshop introduces topics that are foundational to understanding and launching a television and film writing career as a literary writer.

Let’s say you’re a novelist. Your book sold okay. Your literary agent liked it. You’re pretty sure your friends read it. Your phone rings. It’s Hollywood. The whole town wants to option your book and turn it into a movie or show. Awesome, just absolutely fantastic. Maybe this was the plan all along when your publisher sent galleys out. But what does “option” mean? How do you translate Hollywood legalese? What rates do a studio or production company typically offer to an author whose material they’re purchasing the rights to? How long does it take for a deal to go from a draft to an executed contract? You have representation – a lawyer, maybe an agent – but what are the roles they play in putting this arrangement together and what red flags can they help you recognize?

Anastasia Alen (Davis Wright Tremaine LLP)

Anastasia Alen negotiates high-priority deals and transactions while providing strategic guidance for both media and entertainment companies as well as producers across critical stages of engagement and content creation. Anastasia leverages her unique combination of first-hand experience working for leading global entertainment companies and premier talent agencies to provide comprehensive business and legal counsel to clients. Her specialized knowledge enables Anastasia to anticipate issues and protect the legal, business, and creative interests of her clients, maximizing opportunities and advancing their goals.

Amy Schiffman (Echo Lake Entertainment)

Amy Schiffman has been a literary agent and manager in the film and television fields for over twenty five years. After graduating from Hamilton College, she worked in New York, first at the CBS News Broadcast Center, and then in magazines, including the award-winning American Photographer Magazine, where she eventually became an editor and columnist, and later at GQ and Diversion magazines.

Her Hollywood career began in the Literary Properties division of the William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills, where she was Vice President. There she sold the books Friday Night Lights, Apollo 13, Sleepers, Permanent Midnight and Primal Fear, all of which were produced as feature films during her tenure at the agency.

Schiffman went on to run the literary properties division at The Gersh Agency, and later became a partner in the literary management firm Intellectual Property Group. She represents Dennis Lehane, (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island, The Drop) Don DeLillo (White Noise) and Daniel Woodrell (Winter’s Bone) among many others. Her notable book to film projects include the international best seller The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Anne Shaeffer and Annie Barrows. The film, starring Lilly James and directed by Mike Newell, is currently streaming on Netflix. In the fall, Netflix plans to release the Noah Baumbach-directed feature based on White Noise. Later this year, Apple will premiere Dennis Lehane’s first original limited series, Black Bird.

Schiffman joined Echo Lake Entertainment in 2018, to build and run the intellectual property department. She has been a guest speaker at The University of Southern California’s Peter Stark program, as well as at the Master of Professional Writing program and guest lectured at American Film Institute and California State University at Northridge. Her personal writing has been published in Lost Orchard, Volumes One and Two (SUNY Press), and My City, My Los Angeles (Globe Pequot).

Héctor Tobar

Héctor Tobar is the author of five books published in fifteen languages, including the critically acclaimed, New York Times bestseller: Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle That Set Them Free. His most recent novel is The Last Great Road Bum, published by MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Héctor is also an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine. He's written for The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, and other publications. Deep Down Dark was adapted into the film The 33, starring Antonio Banderas. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, L.A. Noir, Zyzzyva, and Slate.

Jade Chang

Jade Chang is the author of The Wangs vs. the World, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The Wangs has been named a New York Times Editors’ Choice as well as a Best Book of the Year by Amazon, Buzzfeed, ELLE, and NPR, and was honored with the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. The novel will be published in 12 countries. According to NPR, “Her book is unrelentingly fun, but it is also raw and profane—a story of fierce pride, fierce anger, and even fiercer love.”