Ronika Merl, the Gorgeous Spark of Creativity

Ronika is an award-winning screenwriter. She also directs, and runs the Wicklow Stories Film Festival. Having placed highly in both the Academy Nicholl Fellowship as well as the Austin Film Festival in 2019, she has since expanded her slate to contain more than 22 feature-length scripts. She has lectured at Griffith College in Dublin, Ireland and has given multiple workshops in Ireland and the UK. Her latest work, Matriarchy is a film and TV adaptation of Mary Mackey's best-selling novel series "Earthsong," which is being produced by Chainsaw Europe. She is also the artistic director of the Wicklow Stories Film Festival, which was launched in 2022 and was funded and supported by Creative Ireland. Her textbook for Irish Screenwriters "The Hustle" is now available on Amazon or can be purchased directly from her. An addition and expansion to this work, titled "Navigating Hollywood" can be purchased through the New York Script Awards. Her poetry collections "I Love You, Dave Taylor" and "Joy Clings" are available on amazon.com, with her new book "She," coming out in April 2024. She has consulted on projects in the US, UK, South Africa and Australia. We talk about Ireland, growing up in a tribal community in India, the importance of community, religion, screenwriting, writing nonfiction, trying to write  novel, creativity and where it comes from, creative burnout and how to deal with it, defining your own success as an artist, cultivating creativity, writing poetry, empathy, an much more. Ronika also reads her poem "Nobody's Daughter."  Shownotes and relevant links are here https://www.paultrammell.com/dream-chasers-and-eccentrics Support the show here https://www.patreon.com/DreamChasersandEccentrics