Jane Espenson

Jane Espenson is a Hugo Award‑winning screen‑writer who has worked on several science fiction television series including Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica, among others. She has also edited two anthologies of essays — Finding Serenity and Serenity Found — about Joss Whedon’s ’verse as seen in the television series Firefly and the major motion picture Serenity.

You can discover even more about Jane Espenson and her work at www.janeespenson.com.

How did you get involved in writing for Television?

The first step was just getting involved with television — I loved it so much that I knew I wanted to write for TV from when I was a small child. Every now and then, as a kid, and then as an undergraduate in college, I’d try to write a spec script — a writing sample in the form of a script for an established show. I was in grad school when I learned you could submit scripts to Star Trek: The Next Generation without having to have an agent as intermediary. I submitted three spec episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and was invited in to pitch episode ideas. It was after this modest start that I learned of the Disney Writing Fellowship, which really launched my career.

How did you get involved with the Science Fiction genre?

It might sound random, since, after all, Trek was the only show with an open door policy, so I’d’ve been steered in that direction anyway. But I was already a huge fan of the show and of the genre in general. I love metaphorical storytelling, which is at the heart of Sci Fi — this is our world, but looked at through a lens. Love that.

What was your first introduction to Space Westerns?

Does that one ep of classic Trek count? Actually, I didn’t even know it was a subgenre until after I’d written for Firefly. To me, it was just the lens that Joss was putting on the modern world in order to be able to talk about it.

How would you define “Space Western”?

Hmm. I guess I’d say anything is a Space Western that maps space exploration as having parallels to the Western‑directed exploration of the U.S. Even just referring to space as a “frontier,” final or otherwise, is to see it with a Space Western POV.

Click on the link :

http://www.spacewesterns.com/articles/37/