Alexandra Viets is a screenwriter and journalist who received her mfa degree from Columbia University. Her first feature length screenplay “Cotton Mary” won a New York Foundation for the Arts award and was produced by Merchant Ivory. She has also completed a feature length screenplay set in modern day Kashmir and is currently in pre-production on a film called, “Ask Me No Questions” about a Bangladeshi family fleeing NYC post 9/11. She is the director of a documentary called, “Practicing English” about the acquisition of English by a group of refugees in NYC. She was the recipient of the Paul Newman scholarship for screenwriting at YADDO Artists Colony and is currently a visiting professor at Towson University’s Department of Theater Arts.