Columbia Alumni Selected for Prestigious NBC TV Writers Program
The NBC TV Writers Program has announced its newest cohort of eight writers, which includes Film alum Neda Jebelli '21 and Theatre alum Bixby Elliot '05. Selected from over 2,100 applicants, Jebelli and Elliot will benefit from the mentorship of NBCU programming executives, weekly workshops, writing intensives, and the guidance of various guest instructors as they work alongside their cohort to develop a new pilot.
The NBC TV Writers Program, hosted by NBCU Launch, is a program that is meant to help develop emerging episodic TV writers whose distinct points of view and lived experiences provide unique perspectives to the writers’ room. It prepares the writers to work on scripted series, and to become the next generation of showrunners. More than 30% of program alumni have gone on to work in senior-level positions within the television industry.
Bixby Elliot is a queer writer for theater, film and television. A graduate of the Playwriting program, he co-founded The Brooklyn Generator. His work reexamines the past through a queer lens. His plays have been produced in several major cities including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and London. I Love You St. Petersburg! was published by major theater licensing company Samuel French. TimeOut Chicago selected Bixby’s Abraham Lincoln Was a F*****t as one of the Top 10 Plays of the Year. Additionally to theater, his short film Aquamarine screened in more than 30 festivals and won multiple awards, including Best Short and Best Screenplay.
Neda Jebelli is an Iranian American screenwriter. She writes stories about outsiders and underdogs at the intersection of the personal and the political through a comedic, satirical, and sometimes surrealist lens. She wrote screenplays for shorts that were recognized in Venice International Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, Telluride Film Festival, Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, and the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Her feature writing has been supported by the Catwalk Institute, the Short to Feature Lab, and the Columbia University Emerging Filmmaker Grant. Jebelli was recently a script coordinator on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. She also has been a writer’s assistant on NBC’s A Little Late with Lilly Singh and the showrunner’s assistant on Showtime’s Let the Right One In.