Waiting to walk the Red Carpet at the 24th
annual Movieguide Awards
Birgit Syran Myaard (BEERgit saRAN MYerd), a finally-grown-up third culture kid and first-generation Norwegian-American, was born in the Chicago suburbs. She has lived more than half her life overseas (in Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Thailand, Austria, and Australia) and traveled to 55+ countries. She speaks Norwegian, German, and French. After so many years abroad, Birgit is enjoying life with her now-retired, diplomat husband on the stunning shores of Lake Michigan.
After a ten-year career with the US government, including a stint as a CIA Soviet Biographic Analyst, Birgit resigned and became a proud, stay-at-home mom. When her son started school, thinking it might be a fun avocation, she took a course in piano tuning. A passion for writing, however, soon called.
Birgit set to work writing a post-9/11 thriller. Sixty rejection letters later from publishers, however, led her to seek advice from her English and Drama-teaching sister, who suggested writing it as a screenplay to learn the art of showing vs. telling.
That first screenplay effort, TRUE BLUE WIDOW, made it to the finals of the Creative World Awards contest and was one of seven scripts nominated for "Best Foreign Screenplay" in the Fresh Voices contest. Birgit built on her initial success with PETRIFIED, which drew on Norwegian tales of trolls she heard as a child. It won the Family category and was awarded 8th place, overall, in the 2012 Emerging Screenwriters contest. Birgit's Bible-inspired epic, THE HAND OF A WOMAN,(renamed A WOMAN'S HAND), based on Judges 4 and 5, garnered the $10,000 Kairos Prize for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays and a teddy bear trophy at the 2016 Movieguide Awards. She decided recently to submit it to secular contests and was rewarded, so far, with a "Best Scene Table Read" from Wildsound's Feedback Female Film Festival in Toronto.
ELLIDA, an adaptation, from Birgit's own translation of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's stageplay "The Lady from the Sea," has won 65 awards and been nominated for 21 more in a number of international film festivals. The film is available for screening on Amazon and Fandango at Home. Birgit is working on a biopic of Walter Chauncey Camp, known by his peers as the "Father of American Football," whose innovations turned the game of rugby into the uniquely American game we know today.
Birgit is a member of the International Screenwriters Association (ISA), who named her one of the ISA TOP 25 SCREENWRITERS TO WATCH IN 2024.
Birgit's ISA profile can be viewed here: https://www.networkisa.org/profile/birgit-myaard