Listed in Variety in 2006 under ‘10 Screenwriters to Watch’, Helen Crawley’s first speculative script, Hearts and Minds, was snapped up just weeks after its completion by Leonardo Di Caprio’s production company, Appian Way.

Although she is based in the United Kingdom, Helen pursues her writing career exclusively in the U.S., where she’s establishing herself as a writer of complex, character-driven stories with an epic geopolitical bent.

Ms. Crawley is one of only two Brits to be awarded a Chesterfield Fellowship, based at Paramount Studios, which gave her a stipend to write two scripts after she won the graduate screenwriting prize from New York University in 2001.

She worked as a script editor at the BBC on several Andrew Davies’ miniseries such as Vanity Fair and Tipping the Velvet before signing up for NYU’s dramatic writing program. That led to a writing fellowship at New York’s Ensemble Studio Theater, and then the Chesterfield selection.

Ms. Crawley believes her interest in political stories and the fact that she feels more at home in the U.S. than the UK film industry stems from her nomadic childhood. She was just 3 months old when her parents, an architect and a journalist, decided to leave Scotland and head for Africa. They spent the next 11 years traveling and working throughout that continent — Helen feels very much at home with African stories.

A graduate of New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, Jessie received the Chairman’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Stage and Screen writing in 2002.

She has since completed four feature-length screenplays, 2 full-length stage plays, and several one-acts and short scripts for stage and film. She won the Hardy-Skilling Prize in Literature, a Warner Bentley Fellowship (1995), and the Frost Playwriting Contest (1994, 1995) and has lived and worked in England, France, Cuba and South Africa. Screenwriting credits include: Letters From O for Dan Wigutow Productions (2002), The Boatman, Breaking Glass.

Helena Kriel was born in Johannesburg, where she worked as an actress and playwright, and has forged a highly successful career as screenwriter in Los Angeles, working for most of the major studios. Her credits as a writer include: So Love Returns (The Shooting Gallery / Middle Fork Producers: Flower Films/ Harrah, Ruskin) Cast: Drew Barrymore, Love Triangle (also Co-Producer) USA TV Valley Song (New Line/Little Bird (UK), Heated (The Shooting Gallery/Middle Fork Producers), Switchers (Jim Henson Pictures), Scheherezade (Warner Bros.), Kama Sutra (Trimark/Film Four) Director: Mira Nair, How the Mercedes Became a Hat (Imagine) Producer: Brian (Short) Grazer Director: Mira Nair, Tsotsi (RHI Producers: Harry Belafonte, David Picker)

Screenwriting credits include: The Heath, (Feature) with Carl Miller. Elysian Films, UK, 1998–9. Lady Brandon, (Adaptation), Quentin Bell’s The Brandon Papers. Elysian Films, UK, 1994 Mozart’s Librettist, (Documentary) Life of Lorenzo da Ponte. Elysian/Landseer, UK, 1993 The Phil, (Treatment) Drama Series, Working Title Television and Landseer, UK, 1991 The Girl from Kiev, (feature) with Bob Ellis. Australian Film Commission. 1989–90 Counterpoint, (Feature) Tra La La Films, Plc. Australia, 1987 By Mistake, Wishful Thinking and, with Ate de Jong, In Love Again (Features), USA, 1985–86