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UCLA TFT graduate student Emily Bensinger was named the first-place winner at the 60th Annual Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards on Monday, Nov. 2, earning the $15,000 first-place prize for Harridans, one of five finalist scripts in contention. Bensinger recently signed with Creative Artists Agency and is managed by Three Arts Entertainment.

Actor Tony Goldwyn, vice president of the Samuel Goldwyn Foundation, announced the winners during the evening ceremony at the UCLA Faculty Center.

In a tie, the $7,500 second-place prize went to a pair of winning screenwriters: Noel Scott Chalmers (B.A. '15) for his script Stinker, and UCLA alumna Chloe Keenan for her script What I Did This Summer, By Sophie Crumb. Graduate student Melissa Finell received the third-place prize ($4,000) for her script Sensitivity Training. Sean Dennison, from UC Riverside, received the honorable mention ($2,000) for Panacea.

At last year's awards ceremony, graduate student Han-Yee Ling took the first place prize for her script Spaghetti Bridges.

The awards were started by Samuel Goldwyn, Sr. in 1955 at UCLA to encourage young film, stage and television writers. The awards are open to all students at any University of California campus and screenplays, teleplays and stage plays are accepted. Previous Goldwyn Awards winners include filmmakers Francis Ford Coppola, screenwriters Pamela Gray, Colin Higgins and Eric Roth, and novelist Jonathan Kellerman, among others.

The judges for this year's Awards were NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt; writer-director-producer Richard LaGravenese; and writer-producer Shonda Rhimes (Scandal, Grey's Anatomy).

Posted: November 3, 2015

Top: (From left) Dean Teri Schwartz, Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards first-place winner Emily Bensinger and Tony Goldwyn