NYWIFT Blog

By Shayna Cartledge

Welcome to NYWIFT, Eve Rouverol! 

Eve came to filmmaking after a career as a newspaper reporter, commercial writer, and teacher of students with disabilities. 

After her children left for college (she is a single, widowed mother), she was able to return to college to pursue her first love, film. 

In addition to writing/directing student narrative and documentary shorts at CA College of the Arts and Emerson, Eve wrote, produced and directed the 35-minute film The Muse starring her actor daughter Madeline Rouverol. The film was nominated for Best Student Director at New Bedford Film Festival in 2023. 

Her screenplays Writer’s Block and Lolita Redux have been shortlisted by BlueCat and Scriptapalooza. Writer’s Block was selected for participation in the 2026 Stowe Narrative Labs. Lolita Redux was a semifinalist for Stowe Labs’ Writers’ Retreat Fellowship. 

Could you give our readers a brief introduction to yourself? 

I’ve been all about stories since coercing my parents to buy my tiny, stapled Bunny Family booklet at age seven. 

But I grew up in a time and place when filmmaking didn’t come up as a career option. So, I gravitated to other forms of storytelling. I worked as a features reporter for small neighborhood newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area. I wrote marketing materials for business and art book publishing companies. And I wrote short stories and poetry – for myself…for competitions. 

It wasn’t until my kids left for college (my husband died young of cancer, so I was a single mom), that I was FINALLY able to pursue my true love, filmmaking. 

I was accepted into two Master’s film programs: California College of the Arts, San Francisco and later Emerson College, Boston. There I discovered a fit in the writer/director role. The writer piece matched my proclivity as an “observer,” and was an extension of writing I’d done in other forms. The director role harkened to managerial experience homed in my publishing days, and even my experiences as a single mother. 

What brought you to NYWIFT? 

When I began writing screenplays, a friend asked, “Did you know that there’s a screenwriting competition for women over 40?” Interest piqued, The Writers Lab competition was my first introduction to NYWIFT and its programs. 

I attended several online NYWIFT workshops as a non-member around the time of COVID. 

During my last trip to Brooklyn (I live bi-coastally), I decided to officially join this organization that offered such an impressive range of support services for its members. The spring saw me join the NYWIFT/Moonshot Initiative mixer and in the fabulous “Navigating Reinvention” NYWIFT Masterclass. 

Congratulations on being selected to attend the 2026 Stowe Narrative Lab! Tell us a little bit about that process and your experience. 

A pitch-oriented workshop for screenwriters in Vermont, Stowe Labs allowed a rare dip into the milieu of a caring artistic community. 

I drove up to the lovely town of Stowe where fellow screenwriters and I were treated to several days of insightful peer readings, practice pitching to industry representatives, and informative panel interviews featuring producers, entertainment lawyers, and streaming executives. I gained valuable insights into how my script was (and wasn’t) hitting the notes I intended. And I learned to get over myself and just pitch! 

I saw, gee, the highs and lows I was experiencing as a writer weren’t just mine, but shared. Always a big “WHEW” in that! 

Eve Rouverol At Stowe Narrative Labs

What was your inspiration behind Writer’s Block? 

The inspiration behind Writer’s Block was an experience I had after the death of my husband. 

To console myself, I’d regularly walk the path around a lake in my hometown. Doing that walk, I started noticing the memorial plaques on all the benches there, I let my mind wander and started to imagine what each of these people might have been like in life. These people who were gone, like my husband was. 

This gave me the idea of a mystery writer who, while walking around her lake, has a vision of a murdered young woman. She makes this woman the protagonist of her newest novel and becomes obsessed with the boyfriend police have since acquitted of the killing. Truth and fiction become tangled in her search for “the story,” and it isn’t clear until the end where true guilt and innocence lie. 

Is there a genre that you haven’t explored yet but would like to dive into in the future? 

My second script, Lolita Redux, is a drama (about a middle-aged literature professor who becomes obsessed with a young woman he feels must be his answer, his modern-day Lolita). 

My third script – and what I want to dive into more – is the psychological horror genre. Until Death Divides looks at how nostalgia over long-ago lovers poison a real-life marriage. 

Eve Rouverol with Director of Photography at New Bedford Film Festival for “The Muse”

As a screenwriter, what has been the hardest lesson you’ve had to learn? 

I am naturally super social. My family and friends are everything to me, and we all constantly touch base. A writer’s job, however, is isolated and demands lots of quiet, uninterrupted time. The aloneness, and at times sadness, I feel over this, is a constant struggle. 

Eve Rouverol on the set of her short film “The Muse” with her daughter, actor Madeline Rouverol

What do you hope audiences take away from your work? 

I write about themes that are deeply meaningful to me: creative theft of women’s work, male objectification of young women, the “haunting” involved with generational mental illness, to name a few. 

My hope is that audiences come away with a different window or style of telling these stories. A sense of resonance, perhaps also, with their own experiences. 

Connect with Eve Rouverol on LinkedIn or on Instagram at @erouverol.

(All images courtesy of Eve Rouverol)