Humanitas has opened up the applications process for this year’s The Humanitas Prizes, as well as its two artist development programs, the New Voices Fellowship and College Screenwriting Awards. All three honors will be presented at an awards show to be held Sept. 9 at Avalon Hollywood in Los Angeles.
In one major change, Humanitas will now manage the submissions and early judging process for the New Voices Fellowship and College Screenwriting Awards, which were previously run in partnership with Coverfly (which shut down last August).
The Humanitas Prizes were launched in 1974 to honor “professional film and television writers whose work exemplifies the art of screenwriting while exploring the human condition in a nuanced, meaningful way.” Categories include drama teleplay, limited series teleplay, drama feature film, comedy feature film, comedy teleplay, children’s teleplay, documentary (feature-length), family feature, documentary (docuseries, single episode) and short film.
Last year’s winners included “The Pitt,” “Dying for Sex,” “Sing Sing,” “A Real Pain,” “The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh,” “Heartstopper,” “Patrice: The Movie,” “Inside Out 2,” “Vow of Silence: The Assassination of Annie Mae” and “The Cockroach.”
The New Voices Fellowship is a six-month mentorship program for emerging television and screenwriters, while the College Screenwriting Awards honor student writers who are currently enrolled in a full-time college or university program with either the David and Lynn Angell College Comedy Award or the Carol Mendelsohn College Drama Award. Writers interested in becoming readers for the 2026 New Voices Fellowship and College Screenwriting Awards program can submit their entries here.
“We’re excited by the opportunities presented by this cycle of our programs,” Humanitas executive director Michelle Franke said in a statement. “The Humanitas Prizes mission to highlight work that highlights the commonality of our humanity remains as important as ever, and the New Voice Fellowship and College Screenwriting Awards will continue its work identifying storytellers to carry out this vision. The new platform and process we’re introducing this year allows us to do something we’ve wanted to do for a long time—directly engage the writing community as readers.”
Meanwhile, as part of the New Voices Fellowship application, a new video statement component has been added.
Said Humanitas program manager Daniel Plagens: “Writing and storytelling aptitude is of utmost importance in a career writing for film and television, but between pitching, networking, and discussions in a writers’ room, it inevitably involves public speaking, and the inclusion of a video statement component is the best tool available to measure a large number of applicants’ ability in this area.”
Humanitas Prizes event funds support the organization, including its awards programs and public programs like Groceries for Writers and The Writers Room. It also supports Humanitas’ conversation event series Industry 101, which returns this month with topics including adaptation, writers’ rooms, legal issues in screenwriting, personal branding, mentorship, financing and more.
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