Jewish Writers Institute

Fellows /

Marina Michelson

Digital Storytellers Lab

2022-2023 Fellow

Marina Michelson

VAGABOND STARS (Narrative Podcast)

An amateur Yiddish Theater troupe in 1930s Eastern Europe is haunted by a dybbuk from the future while on the run from Stalin’s Secret Police.

Marina Michelson is a writer, director, and actor originally from Tel Aviv, born to Soviet émigrés from the Republics of Georgia and Moldova. Her work explores identity and power through the everyday lives of women, as well as the rhythms of the contemporary immigrant experience. She holds a BFA in Theater from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and her short films have been recognized on the film festival circuit, including “Stagiaire,” which premiered at the 2021 Maryland Film Festival and “Biophilia,” which garnered the Outstanding Achievement Award for Best Screenplay at the 2018 Brooklyn Film Festival. She is currently in development on her first feature film, a coming-of-age refusenik story set in 1970s Soviet Union, with which she was a Top 50 Nicholl Fellowship semi-finalist, a Humanitas New Voices Fellowship semi-finalist, a 2024 fellow with NYU’s Production Lab Development Studio, and a 2025 recipient of NYU's Production Lab Financing Slate.