Bio: Meryl Branch-McTiernan is a native New Yorker who travels between Hollywood and the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She is currently producing her first feature film, "The Dropout," which she co-wrote with Tyrrell Shaffner, who will direct. The script placed in the top 5 percent of the Academy's Nicholl Competition in 2019 and 2020. She is an adjunct professor of television writing at Stony Brook University, where she is completing her Masters Degree in Creative Writing and Literature. Her fiction has appeared in "The Brooklyn Rail" and on the podcast, "Nobody Reads Short Stories." Her nonfiction writing has appeared in the Huffington Post. Her pilots, feature, and spec scripts have placed in screenwriting competitions such as the Beverly Hills Film Festival, Final Draft’s Big Break Competition, the second round at the Austin Film Festival, and the Second Round of the Sundance Institute’s Episodic Story Lab and Sundance’s Feature Lab.