EXCLUSIVE: Inevitable Foundation has revealed the six fellows who were selected for its 2026 Accelerate program.
This year’s fellows are: Erica Lane, Peter H. Lee, David Radcliff, Emma Layden, and writing partners Kyla Harris and Ella Glendining.
Read more about each of the fellows below.
“We’re very excited to welcome Erica, Peter, David, Emma, Kyla, and Ella as our 2026 Accelerate Fellows. This cohort of accomplished writers demonstrates the expansive talent of disabled creatives and we can’t wait to help them take their projects to the next level,” Marisa Torelli-Pedevska and Richie Siegel, co-founders of Inevitable Foundation, said in a statement to Deadline.
The Accelerate Fellowship, which is supported by Netflix, is a four-month program that bestows disabled film and television writers $30,000 grants and bespoke mentorship to develop a film or television spec script. The participants have access to writers groups, one-on-one mentorship, guidance from Inevitable Foundation staff, and access to leading film and television writers throughout the program.
The new cohort joins 20 previously awarded fellows who have received close to $700,000 in unrestricted funding since 2021, when Inevitable Foundation was founded. The organization has broadly supported over 160 disabled writers, filmmakers and podcasters with over $1.5 million in funding in the past five years.
Here are some more details on the 2026 Accelerate Fellows:
Erica Lane writes about the things we can’t change through horror and humor, exploring yearning, disability, and the stickiness of family. She has written four films for Lifetime Television and her first short film, RAW, premiered at the New Hampshire Film Festival. She is currently writing and starring in the forthcoming indie comedy series Subs, putting together two feature films, and querying her first novel, Splits. A member of the Television Academy, she has an MFA from USC in screenwriting and is represented by Corey Trent Ackerman and John Tomko at Evoke Entertainment.
Peter H. Lee is a Korean American drama writer with a passion for emotionally grounded stories that use heightened circumstances to explore the complexities and contradictions of human nature. After losing his dominant arm to cancer, Lee learned how profoundly disability can alter the way you move through and see the world. He wrote on Avatar: Seven Havens and Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, developing serialized stories within beloved franchises. A native Angeleno, Lee brings a perspective shaped by navigating different cultures and communities.
David Radcliff’s work crosses genres and formats, but his favorite projects are those that broaden understanding and empathy through humor and subverted expectations. David has written on series including The Rookie and Tracker, and for five years served as chair or co-chair of the WGA West Disabled Writers Committee, where he advocated for more opportunities for disabled talent in film and television. His original short film, Call the A.D.A, won Best Writing from the EasterSeals Disability Film Challenge and was expanded into a series of authentically cast adventures that center the disability community. He also wrote an episode of Disney Jr.’s Pupstruction, which teaches kids the value of making spaces accessible for everyone. He is represented by Marc Mounier and Dylan Conklin at Entertainment360.
Emma Layden is a comedy writer from NYC with an extremely rare physical disability known as multiple pterygium syndrome—it’s a little like muscular dystrophy, a little like cerebral palsy, and it’s definitely a Miranda. She writes about grounded, complex characters who are thrown into ridiculous, absurd situations and surrounded by ridiculous, absurd people. A 2017 graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of The Arts with a degree in Dramatic Writing, her credits include Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS and the hit Netflix/Nickelodeon series, Sharkdog. She is currently the disability correspondent for The Recount, where her videos have garnered millions of views, and is managed by Mollie Gillespie.
Ella Glendining and Kyla Harris are both BAFTA-nominated creatives, dedicated to telling bold, empowering, humanizing disabled stories, inspired by their own experiences of loving themselves unapologetically in an ableist world. Ella is the award-winning director of Is There Anybody Out There?, and is currently writing historical drama Curiosities of Fools, with support from the British Film Institute. Kyla co-created and starred in the BBC Two series We Might Regret This and produced the Emmy award–winning documentary Patrice: The Movie. Kyla is also represented by Ikenna Obikwe at Independent Talent Group and Becky Williams at Conway Van Gelder Grant. Kyla and Ella met in Brighton in 2018 and immediately felt a profound kinship with each other. Together, the duo are developing a folk-horror feature called Living Saints, following two disabled women who are accused of witchcraft in 1500s Scotland.