Masterclass on Writing with Ligiah Villalobos

Join us for Masterclass on writing for the big screen with Ligiah Villalobos who is a writer, producer, and consultant, whose credits include, Go, Diego, Go!, Chavez, and Dirty Girls Social Club. She will be in conversation with Ken LaZebnik, writer and founder and Director of the Stephens College Low-Residency M.F.A. in Television and Screenwriting

Ligiah Villalobos is a Writer, Producer, Consultant, Educator and Lecturer.  She is best known for the independent feature film Under the Same Moon, (La Misma Luna), which she wrote and executive produced. More recently, Villalobos was a Cultural Consultant on the Academy Award-winning Pixar movie, COCO. She is also the recipient of the Humanitas Prize, for writing the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, Firelight, produced by Alicia Keys and Mary Martin, which aired on ABC in 2013. Villalobos has developed projects for multiple studios and networks, including ABC, NBC, ABC/Family (now Freeform), F/X, Showtime, BET, HBO, and Sesame Street, among others.  The latest being, a half-hour pilot for STARZ titled The Dirty Girls Social Club, based on the NY Times bestselling book. Villalobos co-wrote the 2016 Lifetime TV Movie, The Real MVP, based on the life of Kevin Durant’s mother, produced by Queen Latifah and Shelby Stone.  And she was the Head Writer for three seasons on Nick Jr.’s hit children’s show Go, Diego! Go! Villalobos currently sold an animated TV series to the Disney Channel titled Adelita y Señorita and she is writing on two Netflix children’s series, Super Monsters and the upcoming series, StarBeam.  She is also a writer and associate producer on the animated feature film Koati, currently in production.

Ken LaZebnik is best known for his work as a screenwriter, television writer, and playwright. With Garrison Keillor, he co-wrote Robert Altman’s last film, A Prairie Home Companion. He also wrote the popular holiday film The Christmas Cottage, starring Peter O’Toole and Marcia Gay Harden. Over the past twenty-five years, he has written primarily for one-hour television, including writing over twenty episodes of Touched By An Angel. He has also written for Star Trek: Enterprise, Army Wives, Providence, and When Calls the Heart.

LaZebnik’s plays have been performed across America. He has written three plays on the subject of autism: On the Spectrum, earned him a Steinberg Award from the American Theatre Critics Association. His newest play, Autonomy, premieres at The Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis in the spring of 2019.

He wrote for Garrison Keillor’s radio show A Prairie Home Companion for eight seasons, and currently is a writer/producer for Paula Poundstone’s podcast, Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone.

He is the founder and Director of the Stephens College Low-Residency M.F.A. in Television and Screenwriting. He has also taught television writing and screenwriting at USC’s Stark MFA program, Pepperdine University, University of California Riverside, and the Writers Guild of America Veterans Writing Program.

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