Black Female Writers
List of Black Women who write TV and Movies
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Misha Green was born on 22 September 1984 in Sacramento, California, USA. She is a writer and producer, known for Lovecraft Country (2020), The Mother (2023) and Underground (2016).- Director
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Writer/Director Dee Rees is an alumna of New York University's graduate film program and a Sundance Screenwriting & Directing Lab Fellow.
In 2018, Dee became the first Black woman nominated for an Oscar in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for her highly-acclaimed film Mudbound (2017). The film, starring Jason Mitchell, Carey Mulligan and Mary J. Blige, tells the story of two men returning home from World War II, struggling to deal with racism and post-war life and was nominated for four Oscars, two Golden Globes, and received over 100 nominations between 2017 and 2018.
Her 1980's political thriller The Last Thing He Wanted is an adaptation of the novel by Joan Didion and will star Anne Hathaway as hardened journalist Elena McMahon.
Dee's Emmy-Award winning HBO film Bessie (2015) starred Queen Latifah as the legendary American Blues singer and was nominated for a total of twelve Emmy Awards, including Dee's individual nominations for Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Directing For A Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special. Bessie was also nominated for four Critics' Choice Awards and Dee was the recipient of the 2016 Director's Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television and Miniseries as well as the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Television Movie.
Dee's debut feature film Pariah starring Adepero Oduye and Kim Wayans premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival where it was honored with the festival's U.S. Dramatic Competition "Excellence in Cinematography" Award and was later released by Focus Features. Pariah went on to win numerous awards including the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards (2011), the Gotham Award for Best Breakthrough Director (2011), Outstanding Film- Limited Release at the GLAAD Media Awards (2012) and it received seven NAACP Image Award nominations including Outstanding Motion Picture, Outstanding Directing and Outstanding Writing and won the award for Outstanding Independent Motion Picture. Pariah also earned Dee a spot on New York Times' 10 Directors to Watch list in 2013.
Previously, Dee was selected as a 2008 Tribeca Institute/Renew Media Arts Fellow and appeared on Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film that same year. She is a 2011 United States Artists Fellow and her notable residencies include Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony.
Dee Rees was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee and resides in New York.- Producer
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Lynn Nottage was born on 2 November 1964 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. She is a producer and writer, known for Everlasting Yea!, She's Gotta Have It (2017) and What We Do Next (2022).- Writer
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LaToya Morgan was born in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is a writer and producer, known for Shameless (2011), TURN: Washington's Spies (2014) and Into the Badlands (2015).- Producer
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Shonda Lynn Rhimes is an African-American producer, author and screenwriter. She is known for working on the Britney Spears and Zoe Saldana film Crossroads, Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, Private Practice, the Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews film The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement and the Halle Berry film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. She has three children.- Writer
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Raamla Mohamed was born on 27 August 1981 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is a writer and producer, known for Little Fires Everywhere (2020), Scandal (2012) and Reasonable Doubt (2022).- Writer
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Gina Prince-Bythewood (Writer/Producer/Director) studied at UCLA Film School, where she received the Gene Reynolds Scholarship for Directing and the Ray Stark Memorial Scholarship for Outstanding Undergraduate. She was a member of UCLA's track and field team, qualifying for the Pac-10 Championships in the triple jump.
Upon her graduation, she was hired as a writer on the television series "A Different World." She continued to write and produce for network television on series such as "Felicity," "South Central," and "Sweet Justice" before making the transition to directing.
Prince-Bythewood wrote and directed the widely-acclaimed feature film "Love and Basketball", which premiered at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. Prince-Bythewood won an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay and a Humanitas Prize for her work on the film. She followed that success with the HBO film "Disappearing Acts."
In 2008, she wrote and directed the celebrated adaptation of the best-selling novel, "The Secret Life of Bees." The film won two People's Choice Awards and two NAACP Image Awards. Her third feature "Beyond the Lights" came in 2014 and garnered an Oscar nomination for best song and landed on a number of top critics Best of 2014 lists including the NY Times, Washington Post and Vulture.
She is the first Black woman to direct a superhero film, "The Old Guard," based on the celebrated graphic novel by Greg Rucka for Skydance and Netflix. It premiered on Netflix July 10, 2020 to record ratings, and 6th most popular film of all-time on Netflix.
Prince-Bythewood, along with her husband Reggie Rock Bythewood, created and produced "Shots Fired," a ten hour special event series for Fox, which premiered in 2017. TIME magazine praised, "An achievement...a testament to how ambitious even broadcast television has become."
She directed the pilot for the Marvel series "Cloak and Dagger" starring Olivia Holt and Aubrey Joseph, which debuted to record ratings for Freeform. She directed the pilot for the ABC limited event series "Women of the Movement," about Mamie and Emmett Till which is currently at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
She directed the feature film "The Woman King" for Tri-Star and Sony. The historical epic action drama features an amazing ensemble including Oscar-winner Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, John Boyega, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim and Adrienne Warren, releasing theatrically September of 2022.
She is proud to fund a scholarship for African American students in UCLA's film program. She resides in Southern California with her husband Reggie and their amazing sons, Cassius and Toussaint.- Director
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Thirty-one years ago, filmmaker Julie Dash broke racial and gender boundaries with her Sundance award-winning film (Best Cinematography) Daughters of the Dust. She became the first African American woman to have a wide theatrical release of her feature film. The Library of Congress placed Daughters of the Dust and her UCLA MFA senior thesis Illusions in the National Film Registry. These two films join a select group of American films preserved and protected as national treasures by the Librarian of Congress. Dash recently designed two rooms for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and VOGUE, In American: An Anthology of Fashion, featured at the NYC Met Gala 2022.- Actress
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Kasi Lemmons was born on 24 February 1961 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. She is an actress and director, known for Harriet (2019), The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Candyman (1992). She has been married to Vondie Curtis-Hall since 19 August 1995. They have two children.- Actress
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Amma Asante is a British BAFTA award winning screenwriter and director, known for Belle (2013), and A Way of Life (2004). She is a former child actress, who began her writing career at the age of 23 with a script deals from both Channel 4 in the UK and BBC. Her first movie, A Way of Life, which she wrote and directed won her numerous awards, both in the UK and internationally, including FIPRESCI prizes and the Carl Foreman BAFTA Film Award. In 2017 Amma was awarded an MBE on the Queen's New Year's Honours List, for her services to film as a writer and director.- Writer
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A director, producer, writer, marketer and film distributor, Ava DuVernay made her feature film debut with the documentary This is the Life (2008), a history on hip hop movement that flourished in Los Angeles in the 1990's. This was followed by series of television music documentaries which included My Mic Sounds Nice (2010) which aired on BET.
DuVernay's first narrative feature film, I Will Follow (2010), secured her the African-American Film Critics Association award for best screenplay. Her follow-up, Middle of Nowhere (2012) won the Best Director Prize at the 2012 Sundance film festival, making her the first African-American woman to receive the award.- Producer
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Nicole Jefferson Asher began her artistic journey studying dance at the world-famous Dance Theater of Harlem. Later, she majored in theater as an undergrad at U.C. Berkeley, and then went on to receive an MFA in Film Production from UCLA. Since then she has earned numerous credits writing for both film and television, having created projects for Fox, Warner Brothers, HBO, Lifetime, VH-1 and MillarGoughInk.
Her credits include writing Love Beats Rhymes for Lionsgate and creating Self Made: Inspired by the life of Madam CJ Walker for Netflix starring Octavia Spencer in the title role. She co-executive produced both The First Lady on Showtime, starring Viola Davis and Michelle Pfeiffer, and P-Valley, the hit series on Starz, created by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, Katori Hall. As of 2023, she is a writer for HBO's Glass Hotel and serves as Executive Producer on The Venery of Samantha Bird.- Producer
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Radha Blank is a proud Native New Yorker, Performer and Writer for TV, stage and film. Her plays include HappyFlowerNail, Casket Sharp, nannyland and the critically acclaimed SEED which The Huffington Post called "fresh, lively...and poetic". She's a Helen Merrill Playwriting Award recipient, an NEA New Play Development Award recipient (for SEED) and a NYFA Fellow. Radha's TV writing work include The Get Down (Netflix), Empire (FOX) and She's Gotta Have It (Netflix), where she's worked as Producer/Writer for two seasons. She co-wrote the screen adaptation of Walter Dean Myers best-selling novel Monster. Radha was a fellow for both the 2017 Sundance Directors and Screenwriters Labs with her original screenplay The 40-Year-Old Version (FYOV), which won The 2017 Adrienne Shelly Women's Filmmaker Award and The 2018 Maryland Film Festival Producers Club Award. When not writing for the stage or screen, Radha performs as emcee RadhaMUSprime, whose brand of Hip Hop Comedy, has sold out shows from NY to Norway. She is currently writing the feature film script for Malcolm Lee's latest Universal Pictures comedy "Real Talk". This year, Radha will write, direct and star in her first feature film, The 40-Year-Old Version (F.Y.O.V.)- Producer
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A native of Tupelo, Mississippi, Tina Mabry graduated from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts with an MFA in Film Production in 2005. A true hyphenate, Tina is a writer, director, and producer for television and film. She is a writer and producer for Fox's upcoming series, Proven Innocent. She was a co-producer, writer, and director for the second season of USA's hit drama Queen of the South. Tina was also a producer, writer, and director on OWN's Queen Sugar created by Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey. Tina produced and directed Melody 1963: Love Has To Win, an American Girl special for Amazon Kids. The special earned Tina a DGA Award and a NAACP Award. Tina's other television directing credits include Netflix's Dear White People, ABC's The Mayor, HBO's Insecure, FX's Pose, and STARZ's Power.
In film, Tina began her career co-writing the feature screenplay Itty Bitty Titty Committee directed by Jamie Babbit. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2007 and won Best Feature Narrative at South by Southwest Film and Music Festival. Tina went on to write and direct her first feature film, Mississippi Damned, which garnered an impressive thirteen awards for participation in fifteen film festivals including awards for Best Feature Film and Best Screenplay at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2009. The film premiered on Showtime Networks in February 2011. Tina has worked on a number of short films, including her first film, the award-winning Brooklyn's Bridge to Jordan, which screened at more than fifty film festivals worldwide and aired on Showtime Networks, LOGO and Centric. Tina is the writer for Madison Wells Media's Code of Silence.
Tina was named among the "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in Filmmaker Magazine in July of 2009 and was recognized by Out Magazine as one of the most inspirational and outstanding people of the year. She was featured in the Advocate magazine as part of their "Top Forty Under 40" issue, which features the top 40 individuals who are raising the bar in their respective fields. Tina has participated in several talent development programs including Film Independent's Writers' Lab, Tribeca Film Institute's All Access, and Sundance's Screenwriters Intensive.- Producer
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Tanya Barfield's plays have been seen off-Broadway and around the country. She is a recipient of a PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award, a LAMDA Literary Award, a Lilly Award recognizing extraordinary women in theatre, the inaugural Lilly Award Commission and a Helen Merrill Award. In 2016, The Profile Theatre devoted their entire season to her work. In 2020, in addition to TV writing, Barfield will succeed Marsha Norman as co-director of The Juilliard School's Playwrights Program.- Producer
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Pam Veasey was born on 25 May 1962 in Pullman, Washington, USA. She is a producer and writer, known for CSI: NY (2004), Ringer (2011) and In Living Color (1990). She was previously married to Marvin Williams.