Television Craft: Stony Brook MFA alumni top Austin Film Festival
The program recorded a historic year with seven finalists and two first-place awards, building on a 2025 sweep that included a major producer recognition.
By Andrew Yang ·
Stony Brook University’s television writing graduate program has secured two top honors at the 2026 Austin Film Festival.
The program sent a record seven alumni and current students into the competition this year. Dawn Kalani Cowle, Matthew McFadden, and Baylor Knobloch took the Scripted Digital Series Award for Old Bogus Massacre. The project received coverage in Variety’s report on the festival’s winners. Cowle also claimed the Comedy Teleplay Spec Award for her Hacks script, Chicken and Egg.
These results extend a strong recent track record for the curriculum. In 2025, Anna Zabel won the AMC One-Hour Pilot Award. Current student Cynthia He took the Best Drama Teleplay Spec Award that same year. Artistic Director Christine Vachon also received the Polly Platt Producers Award during the previous cycle.
The program’s presence at the 2026 festival included a full audience panel titled Break into TV: Success Stories from a Top MFA Program. Showrunner Bash Doran, known for Fear Not and Beef, joined Director Alan Kingsberg for the discussion. The session also featured Mallory Baysek, a producing partner to Doran, along with 2025 winners Zabel and He.
Kingsberg stated that the high number of script accolades reflects the quality of the student body and the specific focus of the television writing curriculum. He credited the faculty, which includes Scott Burkhardt, Kris Lefcoe, Sharyn Rothstein, and Davita Scarlett, for the continued success.
The graduate program operates in Manhattan in partnership with Killer Films. It utilizes small workshops modeled after professional writers' rooms and provides intensive one-on-one advising. The structure aims to help students build portfolios that can launch their careers in the industry.
