Bio

Austin Film Festival Winner Lillie Gardner writes stories about women defying expectations. Born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, she studied music and writing at New York University before receiving her doctorate in classical music from the University of Connecticut. She’s now back in the Twin Cities, where she leads an active life as a prose and screenwriter in addition to teaching piano.

Screenwriting

Lillie’s background as a classical pianist lends an elegant pacing and detail-oriented approach to her writing. With heartwarming candor and humor to soften the hurt, Lillie’s writing examines how women and girls wield femininity in a patriarchal world and explores how our belief systems both help us and hold us back.

Learn more about Lillie’s screenplays here.

Lillie was the Winner of Austin Film Festival’s 2022 Rooster Teeth Women & Animation Fellowship Award and the Winner of Outstanding Drama Pitch at the 2021 Catalyst Story Institute. She has also been a Top 3 Finalist in the Big Break Screenwriting Contest and a Finalist in ScreenCraft’s Drama Screenplay Competition, Shore Scripts’ TV Pilot Contest, Barnstorm Media’s BOLT Screenplay Competition, the International Screenwriters’ Association’s TV Pilot Pitch Challenge, Roadmap Writers’ Pitching Madness Tournament, and Catalyst Story Institute’s Pitch World in addition to many other accolades.

She has received grants for her screenwriting projects from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council’s Next Step Fund and Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy. Three of Lillie’s projects have been Official Selections (Script Competition Finalists) at Catalyst Story Institute. She was featured on MovieMaker Magazine’s 25 Screenwriters to Watch list for 2023. Currently, she is writing and directing the Twin Cities comedy web series VEGAN PLEASE, and writing episodes for the Wondery Kids & Family podcast Whose Amazing Life?

Lillie is a member of ScreenCraft’s Writer Development Program, Roadmap Writers’ “Writers on the Map” program, Minnesota Women in Film and Television, and the Hollywood Radio & Television Society. She’s also a mentee in the first cohort of the NATAS/Catalyst TV Industry Mentorship Program, where she is currently working with showrunner Jessica Goldberg. Lillie is also a script reader for the CineStory TV and feature screenplay contests, and she serves as a script coverage writer for Coverage Ink.

Prose

Lillie’s fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in Quail Bell Magazine, Delmarva Review, Long River Review, Funny-ish.com and more. Her piece “Schofield Road” won Third Place in the Writers’ Workshop of Asheville’s 2016 Memoirs Contest, and “From Here” was shortlisted for the Hippocampus Remember in November Contest for Creative Nonfiction in 2020. Lillie has led writing sessions and workshops at the HippoCamp Conference for Creative Nonfiction, Creators Space in St. Paul, the Community School of the Arts in Storrs, Connecticut, and more. In summer 2024, she’s teaching Idea to Screenplay for beginner screenwriters at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.

In addition to her main projects, Lillie reviews books with environmental and animal themes for EcoLit Books; writes Wild Minds, a blog exploring the work of writing and creating; and serves on the essays reading panel for Hippocampus Magazine.

Passionate about animal rights, feminism and the environment, Lillie was a 2020 Sentient Media Writing Fellow and is a member of Sentient Media’s Writers’ Collective. She has published articles with Sentient Media, Minnesota Women’s Press, A Seat at the Piano and more. Currently, she is writing, directing and producing the comedy web series VEGAN PLEASE which normalizes vegan lifestyles in a fun and charming way.

Lillie has a doctorate in classical piano performance and an extensive musical background. Learn more at Gardner Piano Studio or find Lillie’s piano performances on YouTube.