Lucy Alibar (born Lucy Harrison in 1983) is an American screenwriter and playwright best known for co-writing the 2012 film ''

Beasts of the Southern Wild ''Beasts of the Southern Wild'' is a 2012 American fantasy-drama film directed, co-written, and co-scored by Benh Zeitlin. It was adapted by Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar from Alibar's one-act play ''Juicy and Delicious''. The film stars Quvenzhané ...

'' with

Benh Zeitlin Benjamin Harold Zeitlin (; born October 14, 1982) is an American filmmaker, best known for writing and directing the 2012 film '' Beasts of the Southern Wild'', for which he received two Academy Award nominations. Early life Zeitlin was born in ...

Early life

Lucy Alibar was raised near

Monticello, Florida Monticello ( ) is the only city in Jefferson County, Florida, United States. The population was 2,506 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Jefferson County. The city is named after Monticello, the estate of the county's namesake, Thomas ...

; her parents are Baya M. Harrison III, a criminal defense attorney, and Barbara Harrison, an artist who taught painting classes in prisons. She went to high school in

Tallahassee, Florida Tallahassee ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In 2020, the populatio ...

, where her mother worked, and began spending time reading in public libraries "until the library closed every day". It was there that she discovered

experimental theatre Experimental theatre (also known as avant-garde theatre), inspired largely by Wagner's concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, began in Western theatre in the late 19th century with Alfred Jarry and his Ubu plays as a rejection of both the age in particular ...

and aspired to become a playwright. She won a writing competition at the age of fourteen run by Young Playwrights Inc. When she turned eighteen, she legally changed her surname from Harrison to Alibar, a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsndI wanted to have that like an amulet."

Career

Alibar attended

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

in Manhattan, where she studied under the

Tisch School of the Arts The New York University Tisch School of the Arts (commonly referred to as Tisch) is the performing, cinematic and media arts school of New York University. Founded on August 17, 1965, Tisch is a training ground for artists, scholars of the a ...

' experimental theatre program. After graduating from NYU, she continued to live on New York's Lower East Side, working multiple jobs as a sandwich maker, bartender and waitress while writing plays in her free time. Around 2010 she wrote ''Juicy and Delicious'', a play based on her own experiences in dealing with her father's declining health. In the play, a young boy named Hushpuppy faces the illness and death of his father, which paralleled her reaction to her father's

cerebrovascular disease Cerebrovascular disease includes a variety of medical conditions that affect the blood vessels of the brain and the cerebral circulation. Arteries supplying oxygen and nutrients to the brain are often damaged or deformed in these disorders. Th ...

and coronary artery bypass surgery. She showed the completed script to her longtime friend, filmmaker

, who suggested that they adapt the play into a film. For the film, Hushpuppy is a girl. Alibar and Zeitlin began to develop a screenplay, which was chosen by the

Sundance Institute Sundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by Robert Redford committed to the growth of independent artists. The institute is driven by its programs that discover and support independent filmmakers, theatre artists and composers fr ...

to be developed with support from other filmmakers at the institute's Screenwriting Lab. After the script was completed, Alibar moved to

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

to assist in the production of the film, titled ''

'', which was being directed by Zeitlin. It was selected for screening at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival; in order to afford the travel fares to attend the festival in France, she raised money through the crowdfunding website Indiegogo. The film was released in June 2012 and Alibar and Zeitlin's script received numerous awards and nominations, including a

Humanitas Prize The Humanitas Prize is an award for film and television writing, and is given to writers whose work explores the human condition in a nuanced and meaningful way. It began in 1974 with Father Ellwood "Bud" Kieser—also the founder of Paulist P ...

and an

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, while Alibar won the award for Woman of the Year at NYU's Fusion Film Festival. After the release of ''Beasts of the Southern Wild'', Alibar wrote a film adaptation of ''

The Secret Garden ''The Secret Garden'' is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett first published in book form in 1911, after serialisation in '' The American Magazine'' (November 1910 – August 1911). Set in England, it is one of Burnett's most popular novels an ...

'' to be directed by Guillermo del Toro and adapted one of her plays, ''Christmas and Jubilee Behold the Meteor Shower'', into a screenplay for the production company

Escape Artists Escape Artists Productions, LLC, commonly known as Escape Artists, is an independently financed motion picture and television production company with a first look non-exclusive deal at Sony Pictures Entertainment, headed by partners Steve Ti ...

. The resulting film titled '' Troop Zero'' debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019. In late 2013 she also sold a novel, ''The Prophet of Grady County'', to Scribner. In 2019, Alibar joined other WGA writers in firing their agents as part of the WGA's stand against the ATA and the practice of packaging. Lucy wrote the screenplay for '' Where the Crawdads Sing''.

Personal life

Lucy married producer Pavun Shetty on August 29, 2022 in Florence.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Alibar, Lucy Living people 1983 births American women screenwriters Tisch School of the Arts alumni Screenwriters from Florida People from Monticello, Florida American women dramatists and playwrights 21st-century American screenwriters 21st-century American dramatists and playwrights 21st-century American women writers Nebula Award winners