Born in 2003 and raised in the suburbs of Chicago by a flight attendant-turned-surgeon mother and a pilot-lawyer father, Natalie Glawe grew up in household built on exceptionality, ambition, and curiosity. She’s always known that she had a passion for storytelling, but as a straight-A, AP-physics-loving daughter of a surgeon and a lawyer, the starving artist trope didn't appear wise. She was accepted to UCLA as a Physics major and declared herself pre-med in the name of her mother. But a few weeks in, she realized she was more interested in people’s emotional states than in their physical health. So, she changed her major to Cognitive Science, added a Film minor, and told her parents it was ‘interdisciplinary.’ She graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in Cognitive Science and a minor in Film, Television, and Digital Media, but more importantly: with the conviction that her life would be spent writing, directing, and inhabiting stories.
Her first substantiatable memory is of sitting on a carpeted basement floor arranging multicolored toy train cars. She was vehemently opposed to yellow and purple cars sitting next to one another. That color combination was off-putting. Her second is of begging her father to keep telling stories about his paternal grandfather Rudy's episodic quest to train a backyard squirrel to sit on his head. At every family holiday gathering, she would watch her mother gracefully, gradually, instinctively coax relatives into a state of hysteric, all-consuming laughter with nothing but her words. According to her parents, she could accurately arrange the alphabet out of foam letters before she turned one. Her visceral sense of aesthetics is an innate and unrelenting tic; she is obsessive about how she mosaics her language; exceptional storytelling is in her blood. In her modest 22 years, she’s accumulated a slew of fantastically niche experiences involving not only an eccentric great-grandfather, but also possession, addiction, fulfillment, and love. She is inexplicably grateful that, in their passing, they left her with good stories and extremely sharp wit. She writes to highlight the shared nature of poignant, hilarious, outrageous human experiences, and ultimately to help others feel more alive and less alone because of it.
Her first substantiatable memory is of sitting on a carpeted basement floor arranging multicolored toy train cars. She was vehemently opposed to yellow and purple cars sitting next to one another. That color combination was off-putting. Her second is of begging her father to keep telling stories about his paternal grandfather Rudy's episodic quest to train a backyard squirrel to sit on his head. At every family holiday gathering, she would watch her mother gracefully, gradually, instinctively coax relatives into a state of hysteric, all-consuming laughter with nothing but her words. According to her parents, she could accurately arrange the alphabet out of foam letters before she turned one. Her visceral sense of aesthetics is an innate and unrelenting tic; she is obsessive about how she mosaics her language; exceptional storytelling is in her blood. In her modest 22 years, she’s accumulated a slew of fantastically niche experiences involving not only an eccentric great-grandfather, but also possession, addiction, fulfillment, and love. She is inexplicably grateful that, in their passing, they left her with good stories and extremely sharp wit. She writes to highlight the shared nature of poignant, hilarious, outrageous human experiences, and ultimately to help others feel more alive and less alone because of it.
Natalie’s first screenplay, Her Name Was Madeline, was selected for production by the UCLA Film & Television Summer Institute. She is credited as screenwriter and script supervisor. She has interned under Oscar-nominated producer Todd Lieberman, served on the editorial board of The Daily Bruin, and now lives in Los Angeles, where she is writing, working, and obsessively cataloguing moments as symbols, extended metaphors, and/or analogies.
Her work to date is an infant collection of short films, screenplays, essays, and short stories. She writes because she believes her greatest power is her ability to bring others laughter and catharsis. Her art is grounded in her belief that the saving grace of the most difficult, seemingly arbitrary parts of life is their inherently unifying nature.
Her work to date is an infant collection of short films, screenplays, essays, and short stories. She writes because she believes her greatest power is her ability to bring others laughter and catharsis. Her art is grounded in her belief that the saving grace of the most difficult, seemingly arbitrary parts of life is their inherently unifying nature.