Marcelo Mitnik, an Argentina native and UCLA graduate student, has won the inaugural Sidney Sheldon Writing Scholarship.
The $5,000 prize, presented by Sheldon at the WGA West headquarters Thursday, is the first of five such awards that will alternate between screenwriting and playwriting for students at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
Set in the 1800s in Argentina, Mitnik's screenplay, "The Dam," centers on an engineer attempting to build what was then the world's largest dam.
Sheldon, who won a screenwriting Oscar for 1947's "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer," also plans to present the archive of his screenplays to UCLA.
Contact Dave McNary at
dave.mcnary@variety.com