MELODY COOPER
About Me
Weaned at a young age on sci fi and horror, I had no choice but to happily become a genre screenwriter. My dad was a science teacher who introduced me to science fiction, and my mother was an english teacher and poet who loved Poe and King. They were also both social justice activists and that lives in all my work. After George Floyd's murder, I was on a Juneteenth panel for the Writer's Guild with Black showrunners and Color of Change, which called for more Black writers on cop shows to bring more authenticity about police and the Black community. I was asked to join the 22nd season of NBCUniversal's Law & Order: SVU as story editor to work with showrunner Warren Leight. I started out in TV in 2019 as staff writer on the second season of the CW Network's Two Sentence Horror Stories, a show that focuses on social issues and women from a BIPOC p.o.v. I'm lucky to have had my work win or placed in several competitions. I'm very excited to have completed the 10-month 2019 HBO Access Writing Program, after doing a 2019 writer's residency at Yaddo in New York.
I'm currently writing the comic book OMNI for Mark Waid at Humanoids (Issues #5 - 10). It's focused on the character of Cecelia Cobbina, a young Black doctor with super abilities who fights social injustice.
My feature screenplay, NORTHERN CROSS, a dramatic thriller with magical realism, was the Grand Jury Prize Winner for Best Screenplay at the 2018 Urbanworld Film Festival.
My feature screenplay THE SOUND OF DARKNESS, is a supernatural thriller about the disturbing fact that there are 64,000 missing Black women in the U.S., and such little attention is paid to them. The script was winner of the 2017 Tangerine Entertainment Fellowship at Stowe Story Labs, and was selected for the 2017 New York Stage & Film Filmmaking Workshop. In 2016 it was selected for AMC Network’s Shudder Labs, from which I received a grant, and it was chosen for the 2016 Meryl Streep/IRIS Writers Lab. I directed a short/proof of concept of THE SOUND OF DARKNESS (in post-production) with a mostly female crew, including Cybel Martin as DP. To raise awareness about the film's issues, I've partnered with the Black and Missing Foundation.
My feature script, MONSTROUS, has been selected by the La Napoule Arts Foundation for development in a 2018 writer's residency in France. It also won the 2016 Women in Cinema International Screenplay Competition and Third Place in the 2014 Slamdance Competition.
Other screenplays: BREAKING THE FOURTH, a sci fi/thriller, Winner, 2010 Woodshole Film Festival. THE DEVIL YOU KNOW, Finalist , 2012 Creative World Award, International Sci Fi and Horror Film Festival, and British Horror Film Festival.
As a woman of color who creates genre work that has a social/political focus, a few years ago I felt the need to create ORIGINS, a group I founded that's dedicated to the creation and promotion of Black Visionary film, TV and Web series (Afrofuturism, horror and fantasy). Members include amazing award-winning writers like Tananarive Due (British Fantasy and NAACP Image Award) and Nnedi Okorafor (Nebula Award).
An award-winning playwright as well, my full-length play, SWEET MERCY, which deals with the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur, was developed by NY Stage & Film (starring Danai Gurira of THE WALKING DEAD) and was a Semi-finalist for A Room of Her Own's Shakespeare's Sister Fellowship in 2014. One of the most extraordinary experiences in my life was when I received a Ford Foundation grant and travelled to Rwanda to develop the play.
In 2013, I was commissioned by Vital Theatre to write the book of the musical SHOW WAY, about quilts that showed the way to freedom from slavery (based on the Newbery Award-winning book by Jacqueline Woodson). The musical received rave reviews in its three month run in NYC and was nominated for an Off-Broadway Alliance Award.
My play ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDE, about 4 historical female astronomers trapped in a time warp, was commissioned by 365 Women a Year: A Playwriting Project, and was a Sloan New Play Finalist.
Other Theater Work: TRUTH BE TOLD, produced by Ensemble Studio Theatre’s 2009 Going to the River Festival, included in selection of new works by Kia Corthron and Lynn Nottage. Jane Chambers Award for my first play, DAY OF RECKONING, about the forgotten 19th century Black, Labor activist Lucy Parsons, which was produced by MultiStages and Five Points in NYC, and New Theatre in Miami.
And because, why not?...I worked as a professional actress in NYC for a few years in Off Broadway and downtown productions.
