Gwen Ogle

Gwen Ogle is a storyteller trapped in an academic’s mind. This results in creative bursts of writing, combined with analytical overthinking. Gwen is w̶e̶i̶r̶d̶ awesome like that. She joined academia as a graduate student and/or NASA Fellow, earning her Ph.D. from Virginia Tech.

Gwen started a woman-owned business in 2005, doing instructional design and educational evaluation. This allowed her to be her own boss and raise her growing family; in essence, do it all. She would eventually have three children. She would also realize that you cannot do it all. Losing herself in this c̶h̶a̶o̶s̶ utopia, her lifeline became writing screenplays. Good ones. Bad ones. Long ones. Shorts ones. TV pilots. VR shorts. More bad ones. Nevertheless, she persisted.

Gwen has research and development interests in storytelling and screenwriting in new film environments. Specifically, 1) interaction in VR or Mixed Reality storytelling and how that shapes the writing process, 2) how to situate the viewer inside the story and incorporate interaction as a means of viewer agency and emergent narrative, and 3) musing about the technologies that will enable this (that don’t yet exist). Her latest article is entitled “Screenwriting for New Film Mediums: Conceptualizing Visual Models for Interactive Storytelling” and is in the March 2019 edition of the Journal of Screenwriting.

In 2017, Gwen decided to pursue passion projects full-time. She quit her job, and went back to school for an MFA in Television and Screenwriting. She was the recipient of the Jan Marino Scholarship, which nurtures the power of strong, independent female storytelling in television and film. This “career change” coupled with an impending mid-life crisis helped her decide it was time to share her writing with the world. Gwen is a life-long learner, story teller, and creative thinker. Fifty years as a woman, wife, mother, and sometimes-academic, and the most important thing she has learned is that everything has been leading up to this.