- By JITC Staff
- July 30, 2026
- In Arts & Culture, Lifestyle
Meet the 2026 Jewish Roots Screenwriters Collective Fellows
With the inaugural Jewish Roots Screenwriters Collective now complete, we’re proud to introduce the program’s first cohort of fellows. Over the past several months, these actively working film and television writers explored Jewish texts, wisdom, values, and culture while developing original stories and strengthening projects they ultimately pitched to industry financiers. Meet the writers helping create the next generation of nuanced, joyful, and authentic Jewish representation in Hollywood.
A.C. Allen is a graduate of Howard University and a former New York Post crime reporter-turned-TV writer who has been staffed on CRISIS (NBC), SLEEPY HOLLOW (FOX), REBEL (BET), SWAT (CBS) and KUNG FU (CW). She currently resides in Los Angeles.
Yael Green is a TV writer who has written for Physical (Apple), Upload (Amazon), and Dickinson (Apple), among others. She graduated from NYU’s Dramatic Writing Department in 2013 and now resides in Los Angeles with her loving dog and obedient husband.
Micky Levy caught the eye of Alison Eastwood and Warner Bros. with her original script, Rails & Ties. The film, which stars Kevin Bacon and Marcia Gay Harden, played at TIFF, Telluride, and other festivals of note. Micky has completed several book adaptations, including Lifetime’s Amish Grace, for which she received a Humanitas Prize nomination. Most recently, she sold a pitch to Netflix—an adaptation of a thrilling international book series.
Josh Silverstein has written extensively for tween/family sitcoms for Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel, including co-creating the Disney Channel series “I Didn’t Do It”. Josh has also written for film, stage, print, social media and probably a few other mediums he’s forgetting. He is also a wearer of many Mediums for those looking to buy him a shirt.
Josh Eiserike is a writer/cartoonist living in Los Angeles whose TV credits include LEGACIES (CW), WARIGAMI (CW) and G.I. JOE: RENEGADES (The HUB). Josh’s published works include the graphic novels THE VERY FINAL LAST GIRLS, CHARM CITY, PALE OF SETTLEMENT (developed as part of the Jewish Writers Institute Digital Storytelling Lab) and a handful of pieces in MAD Magazine. Originally from Maryland, Josh previously worked as a newspaper reporter in the Washington, D.C. area, where he covered everything from Congress to the Warped Tour.
Hailing from Chicago, Jori Lynn Felker once earned a Neuroscience degree to spite an ex, (briefly) delighting her Jewish parents before pivoting to entertainment upon realizing Grey’s Anatomy was not, in fact, real life. With a decade in the support staff trenches, her TV career spans kids’ comedies (Gabby Duran), erotic thrillers (The Idol), space exploration (Star City), and detective noir (Sugar). Blending sharp wit with emotional depth, her writing transforms high-concept worlds into intimate explorations. She is currently adapting the indie game The Unfinished Swan for film. Between projects, Jori works her way through her self-imposed “alphabet hobbies” — currently on ‘I’ for Ikebana (Japanese flower arranging).
Joelle Sellner is a writer with credits across TV, film, comics, games, and animation. Her work includes romantic comedies for Hallmark Channel, comics for publishers like Lion Forge/Oni Press and Zenescope Entertainment, as well as animated series such as LEGO Friends and Sonic Boom. A University of Pennsylvania graduate, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two very spoiled cats.
Charles Horn is an award-winning and Emmy-nominated writer with credits including Fugget About It, Robot Chicken, Robot Chicken: Star Wars, and a number of optioned live-action and animation TV pilots and shorts. The Washington Post listed a sketch he contributed to as one of the 20 defining comedy sketches of the past 20 years. Charles is originally from Toronto, has worked as a software engineer in Silicon Valley, and has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University.
Alyssa Margarite Jacobson is a screenwriter living in New York and Los Angeles. Her TV writing credits include Grey’s Anatomy and the Disney+/NatGeo limited series, A Small Light, about Miep Gies, which won the Humanitas Prize, a Gotham Award, and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Award. Before TV, Alyssa received her medical degree from SUNY Downstate College of Medicine.
Adam Scott Weissman is a dad, TV Writer, college professor, and a passionate participant in the Jewish life of LA. As a writer, he’s written 13 episodes of primetime TV, including the penultimate episode of The Good Doctor, which he wrote on for 5 seasons. He teaches TV Writing at USC and has also taught creative writing workshops in Los Angeles Juvenile Halls. He also serves on the board of IKAR, a leading Jewish community in Los Angeles.
Despite putting this collective together in record time and on a shoestring budget, we were thrilled with the feedback we received from participants. Here are just some of the thoughts our inaugural collective shared with us:
“It absolutely made me want to tell more Jewish stories. Working with other Jewish writers made me feel like part of a community, which I felt was lacking in my professional life. I’m more aware of when I’m using tropes, and I’m finding more ways to incorporate Jewish joy into my work. Learning about Jewish values helped me create a better and more nuanced main character, and gave her journey a deeper meaning.”
“It’s made me prouder to be Jewish in such a difficult time. I’m less likely to hide it as part of my identity.”
“I’d just like to say how welcoming I found the entire group. Since I was not brought up religious I was worried that I wouldn’t understand the teachings, or people would be judgemental (which has turned me off in the past). Everyone was so understanding and explained things in a way I could comprehend, and that made me more interested in the material.”
“This made me want to make extra sure all of my Jewish characters had likable on-screen moments, and reminded me of the importance of making my Jewish characters not just realistic and relatable but also positive, uplifting and/or inspiring in some way. I’d say the program took me from having a “gut feeling” or subtextual instinct that I should be instilling strong Jewish values in my characters to more mindfully realizing it should be a standard, outright part of my character development checklist going forward.”
“Thanks for putting this together! Even more than the program’s content, I found the community of meeting and commiserating with fellow Jews working in the industry the most rewarding.”
“A sense of shared heritage and belonging is a powerful psychological foundation. I think that’s one of the subtext here that all the writers, no matter their level of observance, benefit from by participating in the program.”
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