Writers Guild Foundation partners with Storyline Partners for a virtual panel that will delve into writing about Afro Latino/e/x, Asian Latino/e/x, Muslim Latino/e/x people for film and TV. Featuring speakers who are writers, scholars, and experts with lived experience, the panel will be accompanied by vetted narrative factsheets that Storyline Partners has produced in co-labor with expert panelists.
Panelists:
Sandra Hamada - Writers’ Assistant, Ultra Violet & Black Scorpion
Sofie Khan - Writer/Actor, MexiStani: Growing Up Mexican and Pakistani in America
Dr. Junyoung Veronica Kim - Assistant Professor, Film and Media Studies Program and the Department of Hispanic Languages & Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh
Grasie Mercedes - Writer/Actor, Grand Crew, Perfect Harmony
Amilcar Priestley - Director, AfroLatin@Project
Moderated by Jorge Rivera, writer/producer, Vice Chair of WGAW Latinx Writers Committee
Panel starts at 4:00pm Pacific time.
If you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out to us at events@wgfoundation.org.
For anyone who was unable to RSVP for the panel, we will record and post it at a later date.
In Partnership With
About Our Panelists
Sandra Hamada is a Japanese Mexican American writer from Los Angeles who loves to tell coming-of-age stories. Most recently, she was a writers’ assistant on Disney Channel’s Latinx superhero show, Ultra Violet & Black Scorpion, where she wrote her first episode of television. After earning her B.A. from Pomona College, Sandra worked as a community organizer and political speechwriter, where she used the power of storytelling to help students and families reallocate millions of dollars to Los Angeles’s most underfunded schools. In 2019, her pilot “Lucha Lopez: Illegal Alien” won 1st place in the UCLA Television Writing Competition. She is repped by Kaplan/Perrone Entertainment.
Sofie Khan grew up storytelling in Chicago within an interfaith and multicultural family. Her intersectional queer/south asian/latiné identity transcends to her multidisciplinary background in entertainment (writing + producing) and technology (experience design). Threading different disciplines allows Sofie to weave new lines of thought with her storytelling and solution from different angles during production. She’s trained at UCLA, Writing Pad and Script Anatomy. Her wild experiences led her to write the award-winning MexiStani: Growing Up Mexican and Pakistani in America. Through creative collaboration, her short film, Ground Nuts was the official selection at several film festivals and won awards for Best Comedy. Avocados are her spirit animal.
Dr. Junyoung Verónica Kim is Assistant Professor in the Film and Media Studies Program and the Department of Hispanic Languages & Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh. Both transregional and interdisciplinary in scope, her field of research includes Latin American and East Asian media, cultural studies, critical race and gender studies, and immigration history. Dr. Kim has published articles on Asian-Latinx literature, Korean immigration in Argentina, and Puerto Rican soldiers during the Korean War. Her book in progress, Asia-Latin America as Method, explores the cultural and migratory flows between Latin America and Asia by looking at cinema,literature, and Asian immigration history in Latin America. Currently, she has also started working on a new project that undertakes an exploration of transpacific relations of labor, militarization, and solidarity that arise during the Korean War. Dr. Kim received her PhD and BA from Cornell University.
Grasie Mercedes is an Afro-Dominican actress, writer, filmmaker and podcast host. She is currently a series regular on the NBC comedy GRAND CREW, where she plays “Fay” a recently divorced transplant to LA. Additional recent acting credits include day roles on 9-1-1, GOOD TROUBLE and THE AFFAIR. Grasie was a staff writer on the first season of the NBC comedy, PERFECT HARMONY and is currently developing two television projects. Past filmmaker credits include JUST THE TWO OF US, a dark comedy short that she wrote, co-directed and starred in that won the Audience Award at the 2021 Atlanta Film Festival. A COVID-19 LOVE STORY, a short film shot entirely on iPhones in two separate locations with co-collaborator Matthew Law. Shot and completed just weeks into quarantine, it garnered some viral attention plus a story on ABC7 Los Angeles. POSTMATE, a quirky, COVID-inspired short she wrote and directed that’s currently available for viewing on American Airlines flights and EGG DAY, which was Grasie’s directorial film debut. Finally, Grasie serves as host and producer on the podcast NOT (Blank) ENOUGH, where she talks to her guests about everyday insecurities and triumphs.
Amilcar Priestley is the Director of the AfroLatin@® Project and co-Director of the Afro-Latino Festival of New York (www.afrolatinofestnyc). The Project aims to facilitate the digital curation of Afrolatino experience and histories and to encouraging the use of digital tools for the socioeconomic and political development of Afrolatino communities. The Festival is a digital and live events production platform that educates, affirms and celebrates the many contributions of people of African descent from Latin America and the Caribbean. He began his legal career as an associate at a boutique entertainment law practice served as a Director of Business and Legal Affairs at Westwood One, Inc, and was Principal at C.O.I. Consulting, LLC an intellectual property, licensing and digital media consulting firm. Amilcar is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Brooklyn Law School.
About the Moderator
Jorge Rivera is a former true-crime TV producer who now writes fictionalized murders instead of producing stories about real ones. After years of traveling all over the U. S. interviewing cops, criminals, and killers, he naively decided that navigating Hollywood as a TV writer would be a far less dangerous career choice. Jorge was a fellow of the National Hispanic Media Coalition’s Writers Program and the Fox Writers Intensive. He’s written on the Fox Television series A.P.B., and he is currently in development on several Television projects. Jorge also serves as the Vice-Chair of the Latinx Writers Committee at the WGA.