THE STORY CONSULTANTS

Drew Brody
        Drew Brody has been helping writers tell their stories for thirty years. For several years, he served as a thesis advisor and taught screenwriting classes to students in The Graduate Division at Mount Saint Mary’s University, helping to develop and launch their joint-degree MFA in Screenwriting program in 2016. As an award-winning producer, he specializes in partnering with writer-directors on passion projects. As a story consultant, he has worked with hundreds of writers on screenplays, TV pilots, stage plays, short stories, essays, and novels, as well as with directors to polish completed works for stage and screen.

Laura J. Burns
Laura J. Burns is a TV and book writer who created the book series Roswell High, basis for the shows ROSWELL and ROSWELL NM. She was on staff at ROSWELL and 1-800-MISSING and co-wrote two pilots for 20th Television. She's written more than 40 YA books about everything from hungry lake monsters to out-of-control Hollywood starlets, edited best-selling book series from Sweet Valley High to Goosebumps, acted in Off-Off-Broadway plays, raised 3 kids, and run for office.

Chris Pearson
Chris Pearson co-created and wrote over 30 half-hour episodes of the animated comedy show Dan Vs., which ran on the Hub Network for three seasons. As Executive Producer, Chris was nominated for Daytime Emmy awards in 2013 and 2014. More recently he wrote for NowThis Politics, GoKidGo, and the Netflix series Buddy Thunderstruck. He is a producer on the award-winning indie horror/comedy eVil Sublet, currently screening at film festivals in the U.S. and abroad.

Katherine Bountry
Katherine Boutry is currently in development on a tv drama series MADAM SEATTLE with Happy Place Productions. From 2019-2022 she served as showrunner for 30 episodes of the new series in French, NYALA, based on author Stella Sanogoh’s short story collection for RTI (Radio Television Ivoirienne).  She is a consulting producer for the Ivoirienne series UN REGARD DANS MA VIE (RTI 2022-2023). Currently, she is adapting author Dana Claire’s YA novels: supernatural HUNTERLAND and YA football romance SIDELINERS for television. She is also adapting Brian Klingborg’s Chinatown noir mystery THIEF OF SOULS as a limited series for television. Her drama pilot BOONE saw her nominated as a Harvardwood Writer to Watch 2021. Her original pilot THE VIRGINS was optioned first by Sundance and by Radar Pictures in 2017. She was nominated by Amazon Studios and was a finalist for the 2017 Nantucket Screenwriters’ Colony. In 2015, Katherine was hired to helm a Canal A+ series VERT OLIVE, in the Ivory Coast where she oversaw the writing of 26 episodes in French. Katherine received her PhD in English at Harvard University where she taught for five years before moving to LA to develop a pilot based on a Meg Cabot book series for the Oxygen Network. She staffed on the YA series MISSING and THE HAUNTING HOUR. Her spec scripts for DEXTER and THE SOPRANOS were finalists at the Austin Film Festival. She was also a fellow in the Warner Brothers Drama Writing Program. As a graduate student, she was a Fulbright Scholar in the Czech Republic.