Rylend Grant
Lead Instructor, Film/TV/Comic Book Writing & Curriculum Development
Rylend Grant is an award‑winning screenwriter, comic book creator, novelist, and Soto Zen Buddhist monk whose career spans Hollywood development, independent filmmaking, and high‑impact storytelling across multiple mediums. A Detroit native, Grant graduated with high honors from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Film and Art History before earning his master’s degree from the American Film Institute Conservatory.
Grant began his career working in development for filmmakers Oliver Stone and Hal Hartley, later emerging as a writer whose screenplays twice became finalists for the Academy Nicholl Fellowship (2003, 2004) and winner of the Final Draft Big Break Competition (2004). His scripts have twice appeared on The Black List (2005, 2009), and Total Film named his screenplay The Ghost and the Wolf one of Hollywood’s “Top 50 Unproduced Scripts.”
Over the past decade, Grant has worked as a Guild screenwriter developing film and television projects with industry leaders including Ridley Scott, Howard Gordon, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Johnny Depp, John Woo, Adam Wingard, Dean Devlin, Luc Besson, and Penélope Cruz. His fiction has been optioned for film and television by major studios, with projects set up for directors such as Justin Lin, F. Gary Gray, and Matt Shakman.
Grant is also a prolific comic book creator. His political action‑thriller series Aberrant was picked up for a ten‑issue run by Action Lab Comics, alongside additional titles including Circle of Death, Axiom, and Tokusatsu.
In 2026, Grant was named Head of IP Development at White Cat Entertainment, where he leads adaptation strategy for comics, animation, and cross‑platform storytelling. He continues his work as Managing Partner at Shoshin Creative Lab, developing projects for Amazon, Hulu, HBO Max, LEGO, and Funny or Die.
As Advisor for Film/TV/Comic Book Writing & Curriculum Development at Ben Free, Grant brings his extensive industry experience, narrative expertise, and cross‑disciplinary creative background to help shape curriculum that empowers system‑impacted individuals to develop professional‑grade storytelling skills across screenwriting, comics, and multimedia narrative arts.