Elaine Lai
rebel buddhist | scholar | storyteller
Elaine Lai (PhD, Stanford University) is a scholar of Buddhism, writer, and director. As a scholar, she has served as a Lecturer at Stanford and published on subjects ranging from film and the ethics of artificial intelligence to original translations of Buddhist texts. As a storyteller, she has consulted for FX/Hulu and writes narratives that center unconventional female and queer protagonists. Her first feature-length screenplay, White Boy, advanced to the second round of the 2023 Sundance Screenwriting Lab.
Elaine’s writing wrestles most with the question: how can marginalized bodies be free and experience joy within the constraints of deeply violent and wounded societies? Her work draws on Buddhist literature and on her own life as an Asian American who has lived in more than seven countries.
Teaching Being Human in an AI World, a course she designed at Stanford University.
Completing her first book, Inscribing a Tantra, on time, authority, and gender in the early Great Perfection tradition of Tibetan Buddhism (forthcoming from Oxford University Press).
Developing Bellie, an animated feature film, and writing Otherwise, a science-fiction novel.
Stories
Screenplays, fiction, and other media: science fiction, animation, and comedy-drama.
Read moreFor writers' rooms
Consulting services for film and television at the intersection of Asian religions, cultures, and technology.
How this worksScholarship
Books, articles, talks, teaching, and digital projects for scholars and students.
Read moreSelected stories
Otherwise
In a pleasure house where engineered humanoids fulfill the desires of the ultra-rich, a forbidden touch between two workers unlocks a stolen memory of love — and awakens something powerful enough to make them want to be free.
Bellie
On her eleventh birthday, the Lord of Death comes for Bellie’s mother and she chases him into another world to bring her back. There, Bellie and several mythical creatures must unite to face an Insatiable evil that started in the human world and has crossed over.