The authors and screenwriters behind the film “Conclave” and the series “Say Nothing” won the 37th-annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards on the evening of Saturday, Feb. 22. Selection committee chair Howard Rodman announced the winners at a black-tie ceremony at USC’s Town and Gown ballroom.

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From left to right: Peter Straughan (screenwriter, Conclave), Dean of the USC Libraries Melissa Just, Joshua Zetumer (screenwriter, Say Nothing), Scripter Selection Committee Chair Howard Rodman (Photo: Business Wire)

The Scripter Awards recognize the year’s most accomplished adaptations of the written word for the screen, including both feature-length films and episodic series.

Novelist Robert Harris and screenwriter Peter Straughan took home the award for “Conclave.”

In accepting the award, Straughan said “Adaptation is a really strange process, you’re very much the servant of two masters. In a way it’s an act of betrayal of one master for the other.” He joked that “You start off with a book that you love, you read it again and again, and then you end up throwing it over your shoulder,” crediting author Robert Harris for being “so kind, so generous, so open throughout.”

In the episodic series category, Joshua Zetumer and Patrick Radden Keefe won for the episode “The People in the Dirt” from the limited series “Say Nothing,” which Zetumer adapted from Keefe’s nonfiction book about the Troubles in Ireland.

Zetumer referenced this year’s extraordinary group of Scripter finalists, saying “Projects like these reminded me of why I wanted to become a writer when I was sitting in USC’s Leavey Library dreaming of becoming a screenwriter. If you fell in love with movies, or fell in love with TV, chances are you fell in love with something dangerous.”

Special guest for the evening, actress and producer Jennifer Beals, shared her thoughts on the impact of libraries. “If ever you are at a loss wondering if there is good in the world,” she said, “you have only to go to a library. There you will find shelf upon shelf of books where authors have poured their knowledge, their stories, their creativity on page after page...if a library is not the very best of what society has to offer, I don't know what is.”

Earlier in the evening, Howard Rodman accepted the Ex Libris Award, which honors exceptional commitment to the USC Libraries. Rodman has been the chair of the Scripter Selection Committee for the past twelve years. Presenting him with the award was celebrated novelist Walter Mosley who credited Rodman for being an influence on thousands of writers, producers, editors, directors, and “a gardener of revelation for those of us who didn’t know where we were going or even when we had arrived.”

Tyson Gaskill gaskill@usc.edu