RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes to Receive WGAW’s 2025 Paul Selvin Award for Nickel Boys
Los Angeles – Academy Award-nominee and Peabody Award-winner RaMell Ross and Academy Award-nominee and Emmy Award-winner Joslyn Barnes have been named recipients of Writers Guild of America West’s 2025 Paul Selvin Award in recognition of their writing of Nickel Boys, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. Ross will accept on behalf of the duo at the Writers Guild Awards Los Angeles show on Saturday, February 15 at the Beverly Hilton.
Named for the late Paul Selvin, general counsel to WGAW for 25 years, the honorary award is given each year to the member or members whose script best embodies the spirit of the constitutional and civil rights and liberties that are indispensable to the survival of free writers everywhere—“the essence of the film,” Ross said of the Selvin Award.
Nickel Boys tells the story of Elwood Curtis, an African-American high school student wrongfully convicted of a crime and sent to the Nickel Academy reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida, where he befriends Turner, another ward of the state. The bond between the two teenagers is a source of hope through the unspeakable abuse they experience at the Nickel Academy. Co-writers RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes are both Academy Award-nominated documentarians. Nickel Boys, which Ross also directed, is their second collaboration and Ross’ first foray into fictional storytelling.
“It’s a huge honor to be awarded this particular award especially given where we are in the world right now with disinformation and misinformation being very deliberately created to keep people in a kind of permanent state of crisis,” said Barnes.
“Joslyn and I wanted to take a grand visual approach in which you’re contending with something so fundamentally true, but you’re not being told it, you’re witnessing it yourself,” added Ross.
The film has received widespread critical acclaim with over 170 award nominations including a Writers Guild Award nomination for Adapted Screenplay, two Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay; five Critics Choice Awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay; six NAACP Image Awards, including Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture; two Film Independent Spirit Award nominations, including Best Feature; and it won the 2025 AFI Award for Movie of the Year.
Previous recipients of the Paul Selvin Award include Cord Jefferson, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Barry Jenkins, Will Berson & Shaka King and Kenny Lucas & Keith Lucas, Charles Randolph, Adam McKay, Dustin Lance Black, Alex Gibney, Susannah Grant, Eric Roth, Michael Mann, Gary Ross, Liz Hannah, Josh Singer, George Clooney and Tony Kushner.
For a photo of Paul Selvin Award honoree RaMell Ross, click here.
For a photo of Paul Selvin Award honoree Joslyn Barnes, click here.
To register for press credentials for the 2025 Writers Guild Awards Los Angeles-based show, please click here.
The 2025 Writers Guild Awards will be livestreamed, starting at 4:30 pm PT, at awards.wga.org.
The Writers Guild Awards honor outstanding writing in film, television, streaming, news (broadcast and digital), radio/audio, and promotional categories. The 2025 Writers Guild Awards (77th Annual) will be held on Saturday, February 15. For more information about the 2025 Writers Guild Awards, please visit awards.wga.org or wgaeast.org/awards.
Please direct Los Angeles-based media inquiries regarding the 2025 Writers Guild Awards to Bob Hopkinson in the WGAW Communications Department at (310) 801-8563 or email: Bob Hopkinson.
Please direct New York-based media inquiries regarding the 2025 Writers Guild Awards to Jason Gordon in the WGAE Communications Department at (212) 767-7809 or email: Jason Gordon.
The Writers Guild of America West (WGAW) and the Writers Guild of America East (WGAE) are labor unions representing writers in motion pictures, television, cable, digital media, and broadcast news. The Guilds negotiate and administer contracts that protect the creative and economic rights of their members; conduct programs, seminars, and events on issues of interest to writers; and present writers’ views to various bodies of government. For more information on the Writers Guild of America West, visit www.wga.org. For more information on the Writers Guild of America East, visit www.wgaeast.org.