Erik Gernand - MFA in Writing for the Screen and Stage

Erik Gernand has produced media professionally since 1995 and has written and directed award-winning narrative short films that have screened at more than 100 festivals around the world.

His plays have been produced in New York, Chicago, Miami, and Washington, D.C., and range from dark drama to satire. “The Beautiful Dark” was the New Works Project Winner at T. Schreiber Studio in New York, and a finalist for the Woodward/Newman Drama Award. “A Place in the Woods” was nominated for a Jeff Award for Best New Work, and “The Kneeling Position” was a finalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference.

Erik has taught media and storytelling since 2005. He is a Senior Lecturer at Northwestern University, where he received the McCormick Distinguished Lectureship in 2016 and the McGalbut Outstanding Faculty Award in 2012. Erik also taught Comedy Writing at The Second City Training Center in Chicago. He created and organizes First-Year Filmmakers, an annual film festival for first-year RTF students at Northwestern University.

Erik Gernand is a playwright and filmmaker whose award-winning short films have screened at more than 100 film festivals around the world including SXSW, Mix Milan (Italy), Cinequest, and Outfest LGBT Film Festival, as well as been broadcast on IFC, PBS, and the Logo Channel and distributed by First Run Features and Strand Releasing. His plays have been produced in New York, Chicago, Miami, and Washington DC. “The Beautiful Dark” was hailed by The New York Times as “Affecting, thought-provoking… Mr. Gernand has created complicated, recognizable characters who are, like most of us, victims of their own flaws.” As an educator, Erik is a recipient of a Galbut Outstanding Faculty Award and a Charles Deering McCormick Lectureship at Northwestern University.

View full bio from the School of Communication