Writers

David Loong writes genre dramas featuring deep worldbuilding and multicultural, code-switching outsiders. Born in Hong Kong, he attended high school in Oxfordshire, England before getting a B.A. in history from Yale University. After brief career flirtations with consulting, crypto, and underwater archaeology, Loong earned an MFA from USC’s Screenwriting Division. He was selected for The Thousand Miles Project, UCP’s highly regarded talent incubator. After the program, he signed a deal with UCP to develop an original pilot, “The Englishman,” a boarding school thriller centered around a mysterious and cutthroat school competition, with "Pachinko" showrunner Soo Hugh. Loong is repped by Anonymous Content and IAG.

After nailing a kiss and a single line in Bye Bye Birdie in 9th grade, Shawn Parikh knew two things for sure: he loved showbiz and he did not love women. Being a gay Indian-Texan-American pursuing a creative career, he is an uberbrown sheep— although, he did his best to make his parents proud with a degree in PoliSci and a Master’s in Psych. A student of improv, standup and sketch at UCB & Groundlings, he has appeared on shows like “Outsourced”, “Cougar Town”, “What/If” and “Mom”. In addition to writing and starring in an independent pilot “Bad Indians” with Devanshi Patel and a spoof of HBO's “The Night Of” for Funny or Die, Shawn's short film “Khol,” starring Sarayu Blue, played a global festival circuit. He is in this year’s Outfest Screenwriting Lab, NBC’s Writers on the Verge, and a 2021 Just For Laughs Finalist.

Born in Karachi and raised in Austin, Hussain Pirani is a storyteller with over a decade of experience directing short films, documentaries, and commercials. After studying both Film and Psychology at the University of Texas, he started out in casting and spent nine months canvassing the U.S. for Terrence Malick’s Oscar-nominated THE TREE OF LIFE. This experience evoked an enduring love for flawed, complex characters and thought-provoking material. Over the past 10 years, he has traveled globally as a filmmaker, shooting in places like Tokyo, Budapest, and the Peruvian Amazon. 

Hussain relocated to Los Angeles in 2018 and, drawing from his immigrant experience, writes grounded dramas steeped in genre that explore themes of family, identity, and human resilience. His pilots have placed in Script Pipeline, Austin Film Festival, and Final Draft’s Big Break among other contests. In addition to being selected for NBC's Writers on the Verge in 2020, Hussain was a semifinalist for Disney's Television Writing Program and a finalist for the CBS Writers Mentoring Program. He enjoys good coffee, fluffy animals, and infusing classic breakfast cuisine with food from his Pakistani heritage.

Sebastián Rea is an Ecuadorian American writer and director from New York City. As a queer, Indigenous, Latino immigrant, his stories provide unique perspectives of intersectionality and identity. He fuses his Quichua roots and Queens street smarts to create an Andean Futurism, weaving his ancestral mythologies with contemporary dramedy. In 2022, his short film "Heritage" received the Indigenous Inclusion Fellowship Grant sponsored by Netflix and the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. Rea was also selected as a Notable Writer at the Outfest Screenwriting Lab with the pilot version of "Heritage." His previous short film, "Ruta Viva," won Best Short at the New York Latino Film Festival and was licensed by HBO. He was the personal assistant to director Jason Moore on the Amazon Studios feature film "Shotgun Wedding" and is currently a production assistant to Jennifer Lopez at Nuyorican Productions in Los Angeles. Rea is currently seeking representation.

Emman Sadorra is a 2nd generation Filipino-American writer who is drawn to telling stories about identity and finding humor in unexpected places. Born and raised by immigrant parents in Eagle Rock, California, Emman’s formative years were spent feeling guilty for being bad at all the things he was supposed to be. Growing up, he had trouble connecting with his cultural identity, so he ran from it. Being the queer grandson of a famous Pastor from the Philippines made him feel inherently defective. And being the sensitive-artsy-blacksheep-only-son of the family meant that feeling out of place was his natural habitat. But through the healing power of writing and learning to laugh at life’s messiness, Emman’s been able to shed his former identity of feeling like a bad son, a bad Christian, and a bad Filipino. He began his career in TV Development, working for a busy production company that developed comedies and dramas for ABC Studios and Universal Television. There, he worked with the team behind the NBC comedy I FEEL BAD, all the way from pitch to airing on TV. After a few years learning how the TV sausage gets made, Emman made the jump to work for a Showrunner where he got to learn from comedies like ABC’s black-ish and NBC’s KENAN. He’s written, directed, and produced short films that have screened at Dances With Films and the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. More recently, Emman has written for the revival of Nickelodeon’s iconic children’s show, BLUE’S CLUES & YOU.