I'm extremely grateful to announce that my screenplay SALK has been selected as the winner of the 2009 Student Screenplay Competition sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. As the winning entry from Carnegie Mellon University, this award comes with a $25,000 prize. SALK is the true story of the life of Jonas Salk and his quest to find a Polio vaccine.

Salk lived and worked here in Pittsburgh, and I immediately felt a kinship with him. I became fascinated with Polio and mid-Century vaccination sciences, and that sparked a separate project that went in a totally different direction. It eventually became my award winning play PARADISE KEY, which suggests an alternate history of the discovery of the vaccine.

UPDATE: Check out the web site Science and Film, sponsored by the Museum of the Moving Image, for more information about the Sloan awards and the Sloan community. They also have a synopsis for SALK listed under the Student Film Awards section.

Labels: Awards and Honors, Salk, Screenplays