Imitation Game Screenwriter Moore Named Fall Semel Chair

Graham Moore, Oscar-winning writer of The Imitation Game, will teach a master class at Emerson College later this month as the Fall 2017 Semel Chair in Screenwriting at Emerson College.

Each semester, a working screenwriter conducts a master class and writing workshop for students in the College’s low-residency MFA in Writing for Film and Television program. During his residency, on Tuesday, August 22, 7:00 pm, The Imitation Game will be screened for the Emerson community and the general public, followed by a Q&A with Moore.

Jean Stawarz, graduate program director and associate professor in the Visual and Media Arts Department, said the department was “thrilled” to bring Moore to Emerson later this month.

“One of the best ways for our screenwriting students to learn great storytelling is to study with great storytellers,” Stawarz said. “Graham Moore’s work as a novelist and screenwriter is pivotal for our MFA screenwriting students who need to understand all facets of storytelling.”

Moore won both an Academy Award and a Writers Guild Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2015 for The Imitation Game, which was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture. The film was based on Andrew Hodges’ biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma, and starred Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. The script also was nominated for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe Award that year.

Also a bestselling author, Moore’s first novel, The Sherlockian (2010), was praised by the The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. He has adapted his second novel, The Last Days of Night (2016), about the rivalry between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, into a film slated to star Eddie Redmayne.

Students in the low-residency MFA program spend one week at Emerson’s main campus in Boston in August, and one week at Emerson Los Angeles in January, where they attend a week of seminars, lectures, workshops and screenings, including the master classes and workshops led by Semel Chairs. The remainder of the 40-credit program is taught online.

Previous Semel Chairs include Jill Soloway, TV writer/producer and creator of Transparent; Learning to Drive and 91/2 Weeks writer Sarah Kernochan; Jim Taylor, Oscar-winning writer of Sideways; and David Magee, whose screen adaptation of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi was nominated for an Academy Award.