Val Bodurtha is a comedian and award-winning writer. Her debut novel-written at seventeen-won the 2017 Young Writer's Publication Contest and a Silver Benjamin Franklin Medal.  Since then Val has moved to film and humor writing, her scripts most recently placing in the top ten for both Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope Screenplay Competition and in the 2020 Atlanta Film Festival Screenplay Competition. Though she's won over two-dozen writing awards in total, Val's first love remains stand-up, and she opened for Jerrod Carmichael while undergrad at UChicago. Val would like to vehemently deny any rumors that she and Carmichael are dating.  Val's most recent filmed work is a short mockumentary featuring Paul Giamatti called "Wax Paul Now," which was accepted to 2020's Miami Film Festival and 2019's AFI Fest, an Oscar-qualifying film festival. The film tells the true story of the viral movement she co-founded to get Giamatti his own wax statue at Madame Tussauds, which received coverage from Vulture, Forbes, The New York Times, Buzzfeed, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Val would like to vehemently deny any rumors that she and Giamatti are dating. Val's ultimate goal is to write film and TV with good twists, funny or otherwise. She declines to comment on the rumors that she and Rihanna are dating.