Tickets available at walk up!
Join Austin Film Festival on Sunday, May 5th at the Harry Ransom Center for a conversation with writers’ room veteran Felicia D. Henderson. Henderson, who writes for television, film, comic books, and the stage, has been a writer, producer, and director for some of the 90s’ most memorable series (Moesha, Family Matters, Fresh Prince of Bel Air) as well as favorites of today (The Punisher, Empire, The Quad) . In this conversation, Henderson, who also teaches in the Radio-Television-Film (RTF) department at the University of Texas-Austin, will explore the changing landscape of television over her 25-year career in the industry and how the writing process varies from room to room and across different networks and genres of TV.
About Felicia D. Henderson
FELICIA D. HENDERSON is the award-winning creator of the Emmy-nominated hit Soul Food: the series, television’s first successful drama featuring African Americans. Currently, Felicia co-executive produces the Netflix adaptation of Marvel’s The Punisher and has signed a multi-year deal at 20th Century Fox to write, produce and direct television dramas and comedies. Under this deal, she is a consulting producer on Fox’s Empire. She also co-created and executive produced The Quad, a one-hour drama for BET Networks, named one of the “Top 15 Shows to Watch” by The New York Times in 2017.
The successful writer, director, producer also wrote and produced such high-profile shows as Gossip Girl, Fringe, and Everybody Hates Chris. Felicia also received three NAACP Best Drama Awards for Soul Food; a Gracie Allen Award for her depiction of women; and a Prism Award for Accurate Depictions of Social Issues. She also garnered a Writers Guild of America nomination for Fringe and a Gracie Award for The Quad.
Having earned BA and MFA degrees from UCLA, Felicia was honored with UCLA’s Tom Bradley Alumnus of the Year Award in 2014 and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television’s Alumni Achievement Award in 2010. Continually in pursuit of knowledge, she is a Ph.D. candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA. Her research interests include: culture, class, race, and gender issues in television writers’ rooms, political economics of the 2007 WGA strike, and the “othering” of single women in the media. She has written chapters for two text books, and her critical essays have been published in some of the most prestigious academic journals in her field.
Felicia is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Radio-Film-Television at the University of Texas in Austin. She and her four-legged human, Muffin, split their time eating barbecue chicken in Austin and kale salads in Los Angeles.
This project is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department and the Texas Commission on the Arts.