LOS ANGELES – December 16, 2004 – For the second consecutive year, Rick Najera has been nominated, along with the writers on Fox’s MAD TV, for a prestigious Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award for Outstanding Achievement for Best Writing in a Comedy/Variety Series. Winners in all categories will be announced on Saturday, February 19, 2005, at the 57th Annual Writers Guild Awards ceremony.

Others Writers Guild Award nominations in the category of Comedy / Variety Series include writers from LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN, PENN & TELLER and REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER. With less than 2% of Latino writers on network television shows today, award-winning writer and Latin comedy pioneer Rick Najera is in a class all his own, with television writing credits on MAD TV, In Living Color, Latins Anonymous, Robert Townsend Television, Culture Clash, HBO’s Aspen Comedy Fest, Showtime’s Latino Laugh Festival and most recently Disney Animation.

Najera is also writer, director, producer and creator of his own award-winning comedy show Latinologues™, which in 2004 took home an Imagen Award for Best Live Theatrical Production. Other past awards received by Najera include a 2004 Writers Guild Award nomination for Best Writing in a Comedy / Sketch, a Nosotros Golden Eagle Award for Best Writing and an ALMA (American Latino Media Arts) Award nomination for Best Writing. In addition, he was named Hispanic Business Magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential’ as well as Variety’s ‘Fifty Creatives to Watch’. Najera stars in "How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer" which will be screened at the Sundance Film Festival this January 2005, and stars along side Paris Hilton in National Lampoon’s ‘Pledge This’ due out in April 2005.

For more information on the nominations for the 57th Annual 2005 Writers Guild of America Awards, visit www.wga.org. For information on Rick Najera, visit www.ricknajera.net. Najera is represented by Art Rutter at The Shapiro-Lichtman Talent Agency (310) 859-8877 or arutter@shapiro-lichtman.com.