Webinar: Breaking In & Moving Up: How Screenwriting Programs Shape Careers
Join us for a conversation with Canadian screenwriters at a variety of career stages, exploring how professional screenwriting programs have helped them launch and sustain careers in television. Hear from alumni of the WBD Access x Canadian Academy Writers Program and the PSP’s Scripted Series Lab to discover what they gained from their participation and how they have built on those experiences to keep moving forward.
The participants will be Jessie Anthony, Nisha Khan, JP Larocque, Jessica Meya, and Renuka Singh, with moderator Caledonia Brown of Cameron Pictures
Details
Wednesday, November 19th, 2025
5:30pm PT
Online
Free Registration
Please note that this session will not be recorded for future viewing.
Participants
Jessie Anthony
Writer/Director/Producer Jessie Anthony is a proud Haudenosaunee woman from the Onondaga Nation, Beaver clan, from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, Ontario. She earned her Bachelor of Motion Picture Arts from Capilano University’s Indigenous Independent Filmmaking Program. Her debut feature, “Brother, I Cry,” received Telefilm’s Talent to Watch support and won the 2020 BC Emerging Filmmaker Award (VIFF), Audience Choice (imagineNATIVE), Best Screenwriting (VIWFF), and Best Screenwriting and Best Direction (Leo Awards). Jessie produced the CSA-nominated Indigenous queer series “Querencia,” winner of imagineNATIVE’s Pitch Competition and a Telefilm Talent to Watch recipient. She was selected for a director mentorship on “The Handmaid’s Tale” and has written on “Acting Good” for three seasons.
Caledonia Brown – Moderator
Caledonia Brown is a Supervising Producer / VP, Operations at Cameron Pictures where she manages a wide variety of responsibilities, both project-specific and for the company generally. She joined Cameron Pictures shortly after it was founded in 2016 and stays with projects from development into production and through post to broadcast, bringing expertise to every stage of a series. Her credits include Mary Kills People (Global), Little Dog (CBC), Pretty Hard Cases (CBC), and Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent (Citytv).
Nisha Kahn
Nisha Khan is a Canadian-Pakistani screenwriter and producer whose work redefines South Asian representation in media. She created, wrote, and produced the Canadian Screen Award–nominated digital series Get Up, Aisha, now streaming on CBC Gem. Her writing credits include CBC, Netflix Canada, Headspinner, and Marble Media, with several projects currently in development. A recipient of the Emerging Talent Prize at this year’s Banff Rockie Awards, Nisha is an alum of the Warner Bros. Discovery Access x Canadian Academy Writers Program, the MPAC Hollywood Children’s Animation Fellowship, and the Magee TV Diversity Screenwriting Mentorship. She recently completed the Canada–Asia Pacific Co-Production Accelerator (CAPCA) led by RESO and Korea’s SLL Studios.
JP Larocque
JP Larocque is an award-winning screenwriter and producer with experience in comedy (CBC’s Sort Of and North of North, CTV’s JANN), drama (CBC’s Allegiance, SkyMed, Diggstown and Coroner), youth (Family Channel’s Home Sweet Rome, YTV’s Popularity Papers) and science fiction/horror (Netflix’s Another Life, Shudder’s Slasher). They are creator and executive producer of the digital comedy series Gay Nerds on OUTtv. In 2024, The Globe and Mail listed them among “the 25 most influential people in Canadian television.” As a journalist, JP has bylines in Maclean’s, The Walrus, The Toronto Star, Flare, This Magazine, Xtra, and The Beaverton, with additional work in the anthologies City Voices: A Book of Monologues by Toronto Artists (2012), and The Secret Loves of Geeks (2018).
Jessica Meya
Jessica Meya (she/her) is an award-winning writer and supervising producer who has written for CTV and New Metric Media comedy series Children Ruin Everything, for which she was nominated for the 2024 WGC Screenwriting Awards with Kurt Smeaton. Her additional credits include Small Achievable Goals, Bria Mack Gets a Life, SkyMed, and Detention Adventure, for which she won the 2021 Canadian Screen Award for Best Writing, Children’s or Youth Series.
Renuka Singh
Recognized by Playback as one of Canada’s “10 to Watch,” Renuka Singh is a Vancouver-based screenwriter originally from Kitimat, BC. Since pivoting from finance to storytelling in 2020, her produced credits include I Woke Up A Vampire (Netflix), Reginald The Vampire (Syfy), Allegiance (CBC), and the upcoming Crew Girl (Netflix). Beyond produced credits, she has developed TV projects with CBC, Bell Media, and Corus Entertainment. Most recently, her horror short Petticoat won the Tasveer Film Festival Short Film Fund. An alum of PSP’s Scripted Series Lab and the WBD Access × Canadian Academy Writers Program, she mentors with the Black Screen Office and is repped by the Jennifer Hollyer Agency.
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