Sharon D. Johnson returns to UMFF in 2020. “Writing for Reel" Attendees will have the tools to develop a 3-page outline for a feature film script. Register today!

Johnson’s early experience as a stage production assistant and writers’ assistant prepared her for a career as a screenwriter. She has been a member of the Writers Guild of America, West, Inc. (WGAW) since 1993 with staff experience and produced credits on half-hour comedies for ABC, FOX, and UPN. She served as Chair of the Writers Guild Committee of Black Writers from 1999 to 2003 and was a 1999 candidate for the Guild’s Board of Directors. Johnson was a round two semi-finalist in the 2018 MACRO Episodic Lab television development competition juried by Charles King, Lena Waithe, Eva Longoria, Franklin Leonard. She has been a featured guest on news and information programs on ABC, BET, KCAL, KCET, NPR, and Telemundo discussing race and diversity issues.

Johnson is also a scholar of film, television, and African American arts and literature, and a widely published journalist whose adjunct faculty experience includes teaching screenwriting, African American Literature, and Black Popular Culture at California State University, Northridge; and an original senior seminar on race and gender in screen adaptations at Emerson College’s Los Angeles campus. Her essay, “Conscious Daughters: Psychological Migration, Individuation, and the Declaration of Black Female Identity in Daughter of the Dust,” is included in the recently published anthology, Teaching Daughters of the Dust as a Womanist Film and the Black Arts Aesthetic of Filmmaker Julie Dash (Peter Lang 2020).

Johnson holds a BA in the Program in the Arts – Writing from Barnard College, an MA in Media Studies from the New School, and a PhD in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute.

Get the full schedule of the 19th Urban Mediamakers Film Festival at https://umff.com/umff-schedule.html.