Ruth Iorio Fowler

"Her voice is raw, fearless, blunt, unedited, dangerous and passionate. No one is writing about what she writes about."

- Director Cameron Watson

Ruth Iorio Fowler is a Welsh filmmaker, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and photographer living between London and Los Angeles. In between arts degrees (Cambridge, USC) and poverty she’s also traveled to over fifty different countries working numerous jobs - including deckhand, stripper and private chef, most notably to Lisa Vanderpump in Monaco. Ruth teaches TV writing at UCLA.

Ruth writes screenplays, plays, journalism and literature under the name Ruth Fowler.

Ruth’s four-part original TV drama ‘Rules of the Game’, starring Maxine Peake, aired in 2022 on BBC1 / Hulu. She is currently adapting a novel into a six part series for Paramount UK to be announced in Summer 2024. Her eight part miniseries ‘Lady Ghislaine’, based on the life of Ghislaine Maxwell, is currently being developed in the US with Chloe Dan (‘Dopesick’) and Allie Goss (‘The Crown’).

Ruth directed and produced ‘Fairies Baseball’, a short documentary on older ballet dancers that premiered at Dances with Films LA at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in 2021 and was screened at over fifteen different festivals across the world.

Her play 'bled for the household truth' received its world premiere at LA's highly acclaimed, award winning Rogue Machine Theatre in 2018. The play received two Stage Raw Award nominations and was named as one of the best world premieres of the season by Stage Scene LA. 'The Woman is Perfected' premiered at The Hollywood Fringe Festival 2018 in The Broadwater LA and was chosen as 'Pick of the Fringe' and 'The Best of Broadwater'. Ruth was appointed a Max. K. Lerner Playwriting Fellow by Inkwell Theatre and her play, 'chickenheads' was workshopped there in the fall of 2018. ‘chickenheads’ was also developed as part of the 2019 'Inkubator' playwriting lab at Skylight Theatre, and at the Road Theatre. She is a proud member of Antaeus Theatre’s Playwrights Lab, The Dramatists Guild, the NNPX, PEN, the WGGB and the WGA West.

Ruth participated in the Sky Studios and Young Vic Stage and Screen Development Program.

Ruth was the recipient of a Leica scholarship to the Palm Springs Photo Festival in 2017, and won Best Picture Story for her work on Vegan Activists in the Press Photographers Association of Greater Los Angeles' 'Exposures in Journalism' competition 2018. She was recently honored with the Stiefel-Dockweiler award for photography by Santa Monica College. Her photography and journalism has appeared in The LA Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Marie Claire, Wired, Elle, Al Jazeera, The Observer, Slate and has been supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Ruth exhibited at The Hive Gallery in Downtown Los Angeles in the fall of 2018. She is a registered member of the Press Photographer's Association (PPA) and the PPAGLA, and shoots both stills and moving image, film and digital, for clients as diverse as the BBC, Alvin Ailey and more (see under ‘cinematography’).

Ruth will be teaching screenwriting at UCLA in the summer of 2023. Please sign up!

You can buy Ruth's books on amazon.

Find a (more or less) complete list of Ruth's essays, short stories, journalism and more at contently.

To commission a project or article, purchase a print, license an image or for more info: riorio@ruthiorio.com

Representation: aweinstein@avalon-usa.com dmartin@avalon-usa.com