Faculty
Jule Selbo has transplanted from California to Portland, Maine. Her screenwriting credits (spanning over two decades) in film and television include George Lucas’ Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, HBO’s Women Behind Bars, George Romero’s Tales from the Darkside and Monsters, Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame Part Deux and Cinderella II, Aaron Spelling’s Melrose Place, Fox’s Space Above and Beyond, the television series Hercules produced by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, Hard Promises starring Sissy Spacek and more. She has worked as a screenwriter, screenwriter/producer in live action and animation, feature length work and shorts. She recently completed (summer 2019) a production rewrite on a feature film focused on the work of Nikolai Tesla. Jule loves talking story and her books Screenplay: Building Story Through Character and Film Genre for the Screenwriters (Routledge) are used in many universities and film schools. She is also a playwright and novelist – and believes it all comes down to characters and story.
Honors include a Daytime Writers Guild of America award, nominations for the GLAAD Award, winner of Best DVD Premiere Award for Hunchback of Notre Dame Part Deux and nominated for the Best DVD Premiere Award for Cinderella II. She is a Professor Emeritus of California State University, where she chaired the Cinema and TV Arts Department and was lead creator of its MFA in Screenwriting Program. She was a co-editor of the prestigious Journal of Screenwriting for eight years and has lectured on story structure for film and film genre in the USA and internationally. Her book, co-written and co-edited with Jill Nelmes) Women Screenwriters International Guide (Palgrave Macmillan) focuses on female screenwriters in all filmmaking nations of the world (from 1890 to 2015). They gathered a fine array of academics from across the globe to add contributions to the 700+ page volume. Her play Isolate received the 1992 Best Women’s Play Award in Los Angeles; her plays have been performed at the Good Theater in Portland, regional theaters across the country, New York City and Los Angeles. Novels include historical fiction books Dreams of Discovery, based on the life of John Cabot and Breaking Barriers, Laura Bassi and the Enlightenment (Barbera Publishing, 2018, 2020) and Find Me in Florence (2019, Pandamoon Publishing).
Her theatre credits include Boxes at Theatre West in Los Angeles, the “compelling, taut exercise in psychological manipulation that is one of those rarities in the contemporary theater — a classically crafted play with well-delineated characters and a satisfyingly linear plot” (**Boxes premiere in November 2019 at the Good Theatre in Portland Maine); other plays include her one-act “Open Door” at Theatre West (2014), “The Wedding” (Actors Theatre of Louisville One Act Festival, 1988) Isolate (productions in New York (Westbeth Theatre) and Los Angeles (Theatre 6470), where it received Best New Play Award from Los Angeles Women in Theatre 1992), No Stranger (Annenberg Playhouse in Philadelphia), “Two Not So Tall Women” (Interact Theatre, Los Angeles) Boiling Point (New York No Smoking Playhouse, Dr. Fedder (Actors Theatre of Louisville Children’s Theatre Tour). Plays presented in workshop readings include Lake Girls at Alaska’s Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Theatre West and at NYC’s Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Octoberfest. Her play Lake Girls is scheduled for its premiere in Portland in 2020.
Jule is now a happy Mainer and appreciates her view of Casco Bay every morning.