Yvette Lee Bowser Set To Receive WGA West’s Top TV Honor

Yvette lee browser - Maarten De Boer

The 2023 Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement will be given to Living Single creator-showrunner Yvette Lee Bowser by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) West. The Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement is the highest honor given to television writers by the WGA West and is named after one of the most significant writers in entertainment history. A WGA member who has "improved the literature of television and made remarkable contributions to the profession of the television writer" is given the career honor.

By the time she was 35, Bowser had more than 600 hours of TV credit and was a guild member. Over the course of five years, she wrote 25 episodes as an apprentice writer for the NBC Cosby Show spinoff series A Different World. After a stint on ABC's Hangin' with Mr. Cooper in the early 1990s, Bowser launched her revolutionary Fox sitcom Living Single at age 27, making history as the first Black female program creator. Throughout its five-season run, from 1993 to 1997, the program ranked as the top comedy in Black and Latino households. Despite being in syndication and streaming for thirty years, Living Single has retained a significant cultural impact.

After creating the multi-ethnic WB/NBC romantic comedy For Your Love and executive producing the well-liked UPN sitcom Half & Half, Bowser swiftly established herself as a sought-after creator and showrunner. Before directing the Netflix series Dear White People, Bowser used her experience in leadership to serve in consulting capacities on the NBC drama Lipstick Jungle and the ABC comedy Black-ish. She is presently working on the dramedy Unprisoned, which will make its Onyx debut in March 2023 for Hulu, as executive producer, and showrunner.

The award will be presented at the 75th annual WGA Awards on March 5, 2023, at concurrent ceremonies at New York's Edison Ballroom and Los Angeles' Fairmont Century Plaza.