Tom Fontana (St. Elsewhere, Oz, Homicide: Life on the Street), will receive the Writers Guild of America, East's Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Career Achievement. Past winners include Nora Ephron and John Waters.
The honor will be bestowed at the guild's awards ceremony Feb. 17, 2019, in New York.
Fontana said of the award: “I'm extremely grateful to the men and women in our Guild for thinking me worthy of the award.
"Now, everything I write will have to be better than before…”
The Fontana mantel already has plenty of WGAE hardware. He is a three-time winner of the award for best episodic drama and has received two honorary awards, one for devoted service to the guild and the other for bringing "honor and dignity" to writers.
His other awards include four Television Critics Association Awards, four Peabodys and three Emmys.
