Charise M. Studesville is an award winning filmmaker selected for The Writers Lab International 2026 -- the only fellowship in the world devoted exclusively to women writers over 40, backed by Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman -- where she’ll develop her feature THE WAVES at Writers Guild of America East and Lincoln Center in November. She’s previously been a fellow via WIF, Stowe Story Labs, and HerArts in Paestum, Italy.

As a fierce advocate for women, Charise is a proud member of Film Fatales, the Alliance of Women Directors, and is the founder of Hollywood Chick Mafia, a community of rebel chicks supporting one another’s badassery.

Charise is also a USA Today bestselling author whose upcoming “mixed-media memoir” chronicles her years embedded in the party scene of 1980s New York City, grounding her work within a growing canon of personal and cultural reclamation. She’s a storyteller who collects originative totems -- objects of grief, beauty, and transformation that outlast the moment of their making – and extracts the stories held within them. 

A singular voice in women-centered storytelling, Charise is at the forefront of an emerging genre of stories centering “midlife second puberty,” the seismic largely misrepresented terrain of womanist stories where earned wisdom collides with radical self-reinvention.