Although writing can be a solitary endeavor, one organization is proving that we don’t have to go it alone: The Del Shores Foundation (DSF) Writers Festival brings together likeminded Southern LGBTQ+ artists to focus on practical writing applications while also celebrating writers and bringing a sense of undeniable community.
As an LGBTQ+-centered organization, the programs, leadership and artist selection processes are intentionally designed to uplift historically marginalized voices across the South and expand access to creative opportunity.
This year, presented by The Red Ribbon Charitable Foundation in partnership with Stamped Film Festival, the fourth annual DSF Writers Festival is coming to Pensacola Little Theatre May 8-10, and admission is free.
“Our goal has always been to give great writers real and practical steps to moving their work toward production,” DSF Executive Director Emerson Collins said. “The Writers Festival is a celebration of work with readings of winning scripts featuring local actors and panels with professionals for real world advice and direction, and an opportunity to create and enjoy community with each other.”
The DSF Writers Festival is unique because it’s halfway between a writer’s convention and film festival with the best elements of both. In addition to highlighting the winning scripts, the festival combines panels, workshops and readings for a distinctive mix unlike any other festival in the South.
The festival will kick off May 8 with four daytime panels: Bringing Your Story to Life, Making It Happen Yourself, Writing For Television and From Page to Production. Special guests and panelists include: playwrights Del Shores, Leslie Kimbell and Matthew Scott Montgomery along with screenwriters Marisa Calin, Ariel Mahler, William Mettlach, Peter Paide and Brianca Williams. There will be breaks between each panel and a one hour lunch break.
The panels are designed with actionable information, focusing on the many ways to wear more hats and produce your own work from fundraising to self-producing. Detailed insight is provided on working with producers, writing with and for other people and what adjustments happen when scripts meet the real world of TV, film and theatre production. All panels are open to the public, but registration is required.
Opening night will include a two-part evening centered around a stage reading of the DSF Writers Search Short Film Award winner Do You Take This…? by Eric Gustafson. This reading will be followed by a special screening of Smoke Breaks, the completed film written and directed by Pensacola-based 2023 short winner, William Mettlach. Saturday will feature a stage reading of Animals ~or~ We Just Want Love… by Jameson L. Black, and the Sunday matinee will close with a reading of The Invalid by Robbie Robertson.
To support the growth and success of winners, DSF provides grants to each winner to help them move toward production including: $100 to semifinalists, $250 to finalists, $1,000 to Best Short and $3,000 to Best Play and Best Screenplay. Grants are also given to production budgets for the winning scripts as well. In 2026, $2,000 was given to the Best Short and $10,000 each to the Best Play and Best Screenplay.
To help further ensure the winners meet with success in the industry, the winning play script is sent to all 50 of DSF Writers Festival’s theatre partners to consider producing the world premiere and every year they have been successful in getting the winner their own world premiere. The winning screenplay writer gets to meet with production companies to pitch their script, and DSF has secured meetings with Universal, A24, Shondaland, Ryan Murphy, Greg Berlanti, NBC and more.
DSF Writers Festival works every year to ensure they are reaching un-produced LGBTQ+ writers who live in the South through writing groups, their submission platform FilmFreeway plus through universities, screenplay writer groups and more. Readers pass the scripts through several rounds of advancement. A final group of potential winners are read by jurors who are professionals in film, TV and theatre with a wide range of experience, success and backgrounds to represent different levels of the industry.
These jurors select the winners by panel and work hard to ensure that as many people from as many communities as possible under the LGBTQ+ umbrella are represented. This year, DSF Writers Festival has six nonbinary/trans writers in their 15 finalists.
The only requirements for submissions are: identify as LGBTQ+, be a resident of the South, and be unproduced in the category you submit under. There have been finalists ranging from ages 23 to 72 and submissions from all 15 Southern states.
Every year, the festival is moved to a different Southern city to engage with a different arts community. The festival premiered in Dallas, the next year moved to Atlanta, last year it took place in Birmingham, Ala. and this year it will be held in Pensacola.
“Because we move the festival each year, each festival is an entirely unique adventure,” Collins said. “We have different arts partners every time, and each year the scripts are new so the actors we are seeking change every time. We also work to bring a different set of LGBTQ+ professional voices for the panels every year as well.”
Last year, DSF Writers Festival engaged with a variety of local theatre companies in Birmingham, Ala. The range of the winning scripts meant spending nearly three months casting the readings. The winning screenplay was the story of a 15-year-old Bahamian boy that required five high school-age actors and a local high school drama teacher helped in enlisting all the actors.
Del Shores and Emerson Collins are excited to bring DSF Writers Festival to Pensacola, already familiar with our city after attending the Stamped Film Festival in 2022, where they were artist guests as filmmakers. Shores has written, directed and produced successfully across studio and independent film, network and cable television, and regional and national touring theatre. His career took off with the 1987 play, Daddy’s Dyin’ (Who’s Got the Will?) Collins is an actor, producer and TV personality who starred in four seasons of Bravo’s hit social series, The People’s Couch, and he appeared as Steve in RENT on Fox.
It was at the 10th Stamped Film Festival that Shores and Collins met William Mettlach during a Q&A session. Mettlach asked a series of questions, and afterward Collins encouraged Mettlach to write a short and submit it. When Mettlach won the 2023 Best Short, Calliope Films, a Pensacola production company, produced it with him. The short, Smoke Breaks, screened the next year at Stamped and will be returning to the stage for this year’s DSF Writer’s Festival.
“We’ve received such incredible support for us as artists and our work,” Collins said. “It is our great pleasure to return to Pensacola to give back to the LGBTQ+ and arts communities here!”
Although the festival and panels are open to the public, registration is required. Find out more details and register online at delshoresfoundation.org.
2025 Winners/Winning Scripts:
- Best Screenplay: The Invalid by Robbie Robertson: The Invalid is a tense, character-driven thriller about power, identity, and the lies we tell to survive.
- Best Play: ANIMALS ~or~ We Just Want Love by Jameson L. Black: Animals is the story of two high school best friends who find feelings for each other they have to hide. One’s mother is abusive, the other’s an addict, and both are just trying to survive their small Texas town.
- Best Short/Web Series: Do You Take This…? by Eric Gustafson: Do You Take This…? is a story about two husbands who, after arguing about attending a possibly dangerous event, are caught in a tragic attack that leads to a shocking reveal.