User:Dorothy L Thompson/sandbox

Nancy Nigrosh is an independent consulting literary editor and writing advisor for all types of writing. In 2008, she wrote an article for Daily Variety called ‘The Lone Screenwriter’ about the industry practice of employing multiple screenwriters for a single film.

Education
Nigrosh earned a BFA degree in film production from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. During her senior year at Tisch she was a script supervisor on Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets. She co-wrote an original screenplay with one of her mentors at NYU, Terry Southern, who urged her to apply to UCLA's Master in Screenwriting program, where she earned her MFA. In 2011, she also earned her MA in Education from Antioch University.

Agency Career
Nigrosh is a veteran literary agent who has represented many award winning writers and directors for film and television including Kathryn Bigelow, who later became the first woman to earn an Academy Award for directing The Hurt Locker. Nigrosh also championed undiscovered talent by signing a young playwright, Leslye Headland, and suggested Headland adapt her one act play, Bridesmaids, into a screenplay. In 2012, Headland directed the film that starred Kirsten Dunst and Isla Fisher.

In the 1980s, Nancy Nigrosh (aka Nancy Blaylock, as she was then known) built and headed the "lit" department as a literary agent at the Gersh Agency. Some clients’ work was groundbreaking, such as: representing the sole African American studio screenwriter in Hollywood for over two decades, Richard Wesley (Uptown Saturday Night, Native Son); representing openly gay screenwriter Natalie Cooper (Desert Hearts) chronicling the coming out experience; representing embedded photojournalist Richard Boyle, who co-wrote, with Oliver Stone the Academy award nominated Salvador.

Client Barry Morrow's Academy award winning screenplay Rain Man gave Hollywood its first look at an autistic adult, while other clients included the writer/director of Purple Rain, the screenwriters of Shortcuts, The Outsiders and Beaches.

Nigrosh joined Innovative Artists in 1998 and signed an unknown screenwriter, Stuart Beattie, whom she secured the opportunity to write Pirates of the Caribbean as well as the chance to write his original story pitch, Collateral. The caliber of Beattie's scripts helped earn Jamie Foxx an Academy Award nomination for his performance in Collateral, as was Johnny Depp for Pirates Of The Caribbean.

Nigrosh also signed another new talent, Randy Brown, whose original, Trouble With The Curve, she fostered. The film was eventually produced in 2012 to star Clint Eastwood.

Her 11 year tenure at Innovative included close collaboration with the agency's talent department, charting the careers of numerous talent clients who also were multiple award winning writers, producers and directors: John Cameron Mitchell, Julie Delpy, Mario Van Peebles, Joan Chen, Chad Lowe, Sean Astin, Isaiah Washington, and the legendary Sammo Hung among them. Under Nigrosh's watch Amanda Brown, author of Legally Blonde, saw a musical version of the successful film based on her book go to Broadway.