Meg's Bio:
MEG SWERTLOW is a dance floor queen, native Angeleno (yes, they exist) and Gryfinndor (even though she could totally be a Slytherin... she just chooses not to be). She's also a badass screenwriter and director determined to use her energetic personality to be a strong female force in Hollywood. The daughter of two entertainment journalists, Meg has been obsessed with movies and television since the womb. Her favorite pastime in high school was walking through the aisles of Blockbuster memorizing movie covers. Meg uses her humor and passion to create female-forward, genre scripts that are filled with funny women who challenge the norms imposed upon them. Most recently, Meg optioned an Untitled Wedding Feature with Four Leaf Productions and is developing a romcom with actress Jessy Schram. She was named one of ISA’s Top 25 Screenwriters to Watch in 2021. Her horror feature, "No Overnight Parking," which is currently being shopped, has won a bevy of accolades, including ISA's Fast Track Fellowship genre winner, Grand Prize winner of Emerging Screenwriters’ Shoot Your Short, Runner Up at the Nightmares Film Festival, FilmQuest Finalist, Semi-Finalist in Women in Film’s Production Program and Finalist for the Filmmatic Horror Awards. An early draft of the script was also selected and workshopped at the 2018 Hedgebrook Screenwriters Lab. The Austin Film Festival called No Overnight Parking, "a picture-perfect slasher." Her hour-long family pilot, Witch, Please!, was a Finalist in the 2021 ScreenCraft TV Competition and was selected for the 2021 Middlebury Script Lab. Her comedy scripts have gone on to be Semifinalist in the 2018 Screencraft Fellowship, second-rounder in the 2017 Sundance Episodic Lab and winner at the 2019 Austin Revolution Film Festival. She's also been nominated for Screenwriter of the Year twice at the Austin Revolution Film Festival. At the end of 2019, Meg took on directing -- she’s written and directed four short films, three of which have already played several film festivals and one of which placed her in the final round of Ryan Murphy’s Half-Foundation 2020 Directing Mentorship (currently on hiatus due to Covid-19). She is also currently in Women in Film’s Mentorship Program. Prior to pursuing screenwriting full time, Meg had a decade-long career writing breaking celebrity news for outlets like E! News and Entertainment Tonight. Meg studied screenwriting at University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts. She has performed hundreds of stand up and improv comedy shows around Los Angeles, training at iO West, UCB and Groundlings. She also trained in acting through the Sharon Chatten Studio, the Ivana Chubbock Studio and the London Dramatic Academy through the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. The California girl is a proud graduate of Hamilton College in Upstate New York.