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Fellows /
Rachel McKay Steele
Screenwriters Lab
2019-2020 Fellow
ADULT BAT MITZVAH (feature) **2022 Athena List Finalist
When Nate, an excitable gay millennial, moves in with his elderly Holocaust-era grandparents after a bad breakup, the two generations’ life experiences, values, and philosophies collide in exasperating, funny, and heartbreaking ways. Set in a retirement community, OVER THE HILL is an inter-generational comedy that is simultaneously a coming-of-age story and an exploration of end-of-life issues. It’s about how people on opposite ends of life’s journey can help, affect, irritate, love, and ultimately learn from each other – if they don’t kill each other first.
Rachel McKay Steele is a writer and comedian from Charleston, SC, who recently left bagels and Brooklyn for sunny Los Angeles. She has studied comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and has performed improv and stand-up around the country. Her solo show, Shiva for Anne Frank, premiered at the 2019 Hollywood Fringe Festival to rave reviews and won a Producer’s Encore Award. She has worked on numerous award-winning independent films, from Gayby to creative development for the Oscar-nominated What Happened Miss Simone? She is thrilled and humbled to be a part of the inaugural Jewish Writers' Initiative, even though she never spells Initiative correctly on the first try. Rachel loves breakfast sandwiches, yoga, and her two rescue cats, Roxy and Esther.
Screenwriters Lab 
