Tejal Desai is an award-winning screenwriter. He was awarded the most coveted and prestigious screenwriting award, the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) for his comedy script LINDA AND HENRY. Subsequently he was hired by Disney Studios to develop and write a sequel to PINOCCHIO. His screenplay, COWBOYS & HINDUS, won the Final Draft Big Break Screenplay competition and was honored on stage alongside Aaron Sorkin at Final Draft’s Hall of Fame Awards. COWBOYS & HINDUS also won the Cinestory Screenplay Competition and was named a semifinalist at the Sundance Screenwriting Institute. Tejal has also written on assignment for Focus Features and Lifetime Television. He produced the feature length drama, ABCD, starring Madhur Jaffrey which premiered at the 43rd London Film Festival and won Best Independent Film at the Houston Film Festival. Currently, Tejal finished writing and directing the short films of Cowboys and Hindus and plans to shoot the feature version in 2026 with Priya Deva and Adil Hussain to star. He ha also finished writing and directing a comedy called Dad’s Final Wish, about a dying man’s final wish is to find his childhood bully and beat him before he dies. Tejal currently lives in Austin with his wife and two sons.