Announcing the 2013 NHFF Screenplay Competition Grand Prize Winners!
In a more competitive field than ever, one screenplay has risen to the top: The Kids from Nowhere, written by Dr. George Guthridge and Deborah Schildt. The award-winning script is based on Guthridge’s experience teaching native-Alaskan youth from the remote whaling village of Gambell. He first wrote about his adventures in a novel published under the same title, which was a national finalist for the Ben Franklin Award for the year’s best book about education.
The script is based on the true story of Eskimo high school students from a Bering Sea island whaling village who, inspired by an outsider who becomes their teacher, learn to use their unique cultural cognition as they overcome staggering educational and emotional obstacles to become national champions in one of America’s most difficult academic competitions. Guthridge and Schildt both expect to attend this year’s Film Festival, flying in from Alaska to be here. They will be briefly introduced at a reading at RiverRun Bookstore, featuring Grand Prize Judge Susan Kim and her co-writer, Laurence Klavan, reading from their youth novel Wasteland (published by HarperTeen), Friday, Oct. 18, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
The Grand Prize writers will be featured during the Festival’s Saturday morning Coffee Chat on Oct. 19 (venue TBA), and honored with a “Granny” during the Festival’s closing night ceremonies on Sunday Oct. 20. Their prize package will have them returning to the Granite State next summer to claim their two-week writer’s residency at the Star Island Family Retreat and Conference Center, courtesy of our generous Grand Prize Sponsor—Star Island Corporation.