The Chinonye Chukwu Emerging Writer Award is given to a feature-length writer who has previously participated in an Athena Film Festival Writers Lab.
The winner receives a $10,000 grant that will assist them in the development of their feature-length script. In addition to the financial grant, the writer receives a year-long intensive writing fellowship and is provided with a creative advisor to serve as a mentor. The award is named for award-winning writer and director Chinonye Chukwu. Her script Clemency appeared on the 2017 Athena List and she is an outstanding example for emerging writers. We are proud to have her as part of the Athena Film Festival family.
The Chinonye Chukwu Emerging Writer Award is sponsored by Christine A. Schantz.
2026 Chinonye Chukwu Emerging Writer Award Winner
The Syndrome by Tamar Feinkind
In 1982, The Bronx, a mysterious illness affecting homosexual men is taking over a small clinic, and second-year resident Deborah Rosen, a closeted, lesbian, struggles to treat these men who only remind her of her own worst parts of herself, and who visually trigger the emaciated images of her relatives who perished in the Holocaust. When a homeless woman, Rene, comes in with a nasty eye infection and depleted T cells, Deb suspects that Rene is actually her long-lost cousin and is the first woman Deb has seen with the illness. Deb can repress her survivor’s guilt no more – Deb invites Rene into her apartment, claiming it will be just for the night, but both Deb and Rene know that this is the start of a deep, platonic love.
Previous Winners
2025 Chinonye Chukwu Emerging Writer Award Winner
Vasundhara Koshy for The Laburnum House
When Brinda returns to her family home for her father’s upcoming nuptials, she discovers her deceased mother’s favourite tree is sick and infected with worms. Determined, Brinda spends days attempting to resuscitate and heal it. But as she reaches the root problem she discovers several buried truths and family secrets. Will the truths unearthed bring the family together or tear them apart?
2024 Chinonye Chukwu Emerging Writer Award Winner
The Pepper by Christine Garver
In 1930s Carmel, a brilliant, tenacious immigrant becomes the muse and lover of acclaimed photographer Edward Weston, but as she helps his reputation grow she struggles to find the space for her own ambitions in the dark room of a genius. Based on a true story.
2023 Chinonye Chukwu Emerging Writer Award Winner
AWE by Kristen A. Golden
No horizon is too far for polar explorer Ann Bancroft, already the first woman to trek to the North Pole. Based on a true story, AWE drops us into Ann’s 1992 quest to lead the first all-women’s expedition across Antarctica. Pulling their sleds 1,700 miles through brutal subzero temperatures and whiteout conditions, Ann and her team must race against time and their critics to complete the trek before the coastal waters freeze, leaving them stranded on the barren continent.
2022 Chinonye Chukwu Emerging Writer Award Winners
Book of Genevieve by Kelsie Mason Ramos
Eager to live a life outside of her Catholic upbringing, a young woman soon realizes in order to find her dream queer community, she will have to leave the only world she’s ever known behind.
Laylayon by Nic Yulo
When a pragmatic retired nurse is forced to relocate her American-born family to her ancestral home in a cursed village buried deep within the Philippine jungle, she discovers that she must face the ghosts of her past or risk losing her children forever.
