10th ANNUAL NATIVE AMERICAN TV WRITERS LAB ANNOUNCES SEVEN SELECTED FELLOWS
April 9th, 2025
Los Angeles, CA – The Native American Media Alliance is excited to announce the seven selected fellows for the 10th Annual Native American TV Writers Lab. This year’s TV Lab is in partnership with Comcast NBCUniversal, Golden Globes Foundation, Netflix, United Talent Agency and Snowpants Productions.
“The 10th Annual Native American TV Writers Lab continues to be a vital platform for emerging Indigenous talent.” announced Ian Skorodin, Director of Strategy for the Native American Media Alliance. “We are proud to foster a community of writers who are shaping the future of television.”
Founded in 2016, the Native American TV Writers Lab is an intensive TV scriptwriters workshop that has developed dozens of writers for current television series. Selected fellows take part in a seven-week curriculum curated by seasoned writing professionals. The lab consists of daily workshops, seminars, and one-on-one mentoring to help each writer develop and complete a pilot in seven weeks and hone skills to prepare the writers to move into staff writing positions.
The Native American TV Writers Lab was created to expand the amount of Native Americans working behind the camera as a way to increase fair and accurate portrayals of Native Americans on television. According to every industry report from the WGA West, Nielsen, and others, the Native American and indigenous population represent a dismal number within the industry. This lab is part of the Native American Media Alliance’s overall mission to provide genuine solutions to systemic challenges in the entertainment industry.
The 10th Annual NATIVE AMERICAN TV WRITERS LAB fellows:
Tracy Abeyta (Pueblo)
Tracy Abeyta is a third grade dropout who didn’t get a GED but did snag three Master’s degrees. She recently graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute for American Indian Arts, where she studied alongside two distant cousins she met in the program. She was raised in a San Francisco Bay Area suburb drinking Slurpees, obsessively watching sketch comedy, and writing skits with her brother for a local cable station kid’s show. She wrote jokes on pilots for friends until she started a writing career during the pandemic. Tracy’s published short stories in Hobart Pulp, the Brooklyn Review, Diagram, Boston Review, Epoch and Prairie Schooner. She has received support to attend Breadloaf, Kenyon Review, the Fine Arts Work Center, and Tin House conferences. She’s collaborated and co-written features and pilots in comedy and drama, and is currently working on creating an animation series. Her ancestors on her dad’s side were in New Mexico before it was called New Mexico, and she is still mastering her grandmother’s biscochito cookie recipe. Tracy teaches literature and lives in Oakland with a free-roaming lionhead rabbit named Betty who is two pounds but can eat a tunnel through a couch.
Kels Cooper (Cherokee)
Kels Cooper is a stand-up comedian, designer, writer, producer, and Cherokee Nation citizen with Choctaw lineage from Owasso, Oklahoma. Kels studied sociology and theatre at Fort Lewis College before receiving a Masters of Indigenous People’s Law from the University of Oklahoma in 2022. That same summer after a small production assistant gig and stand-up class they jumped headfirst into comedy and production life without ever looking back. After getting their start as an assistant in the art departments of FX’s “Reservation Dogs” and Fox’s “Farmer Wants a Wife”, Kels has gone on to be Art Director for two short films and is currently a scholarship recipient and student in the inaugural cohort at the Cherokee Film Institute. Kels’s pride and joy is their two black cats and being the producer of “Aunties Acting Up”, an Indigenous femme comedy showcase which just celebrated its third year of breaking records and making history. As a Two-Spirit Indigenous CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) their calling is to make people laugh or feel seen through unique stories and be the best producer they can be to help others do the same.
Cynthia Hamidi (Cherokee)
Cynthia Hamidi is a SAG actress, writer, and enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre from Loyola Marymount University and studied at the Moscow Art Theatre School (MXAT). Passionate about authentic Indigenous representation, Cynthia has portrayed Native characters on screen and is committed to telling nuanced, comedic, and heartfelt stories that uplift Native voices. Her experience spans theater, film, and television, alongside work as an acting teacher and director at a theater nonprofit. Through the Native American Media Alliance TV Writers Program, Cynthia aims to refine her craft, collaborate with fellow Indigenous creatives, and contribute to a more inclusive entertainment industry.
Shaawan Francis Keahna (Ojibwe)
Shaawan Francis Keahna is a writer, actor, and interdisciplinary artist. He is an alumnus of the Big Sky Doc Fest Native Filmmaker Initiative, 4th World Media Lab, IF/Then and Field of Vision, and the Tin House Writers Workshop. He received a Ruby award in literary arts from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation in 2024. On screen, he’s played the leads in ishkwaazhe Shane McSauby’s Sundance-funded short film Mino Bimaadiziwin (2018), Matt Cochran’s Catskills indie horror Itch (2020), Emma Underwood’s psychological thriller Irregular Feminine Forms (2022), and others. His words have been published in many literary magazines, including matchbook lit mag, Same Faces Collective, Hoxie Gorge Review, and R.I.S.E. Indigenous. Keahna makes his home in Baltimore. More about him can be found at shaawan.com.
Keri Mabry (Navajo)
Keri Mabry is a screenwriter and enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. Born in Arizona, she witnessed the Phoenix Lights and once touched Charles Barkley’s shoulder. Growing up in Dallas, Keri resided in the suburb that inspired Hank Hill’s neighborhood and spent a lot of time indoors watching movies borrowed from the library. Keri studied psychology and English at Harvard, where she also served as co-editor-in-chief of the satirical newspaper SatireV. After graduating, she moved to New York, where she earned a Master of Social Work from Hunter College, and more importantly, studied sketch comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade. Keri has worked in the fields of child welfare and education law, and taught social work at Hunter and Lehman College. Currently a doctoral candidate at CUNY Graduate Center, Keri lives in Minneapolis with her husband and their dog, Mochi, where she hibernates and emerges in the spring as someone who really has it together this time, you’ll see. As a writer, Keri is drawn to creating things that make people laugh and characters who feel like outsiders in society and their own lives, an inexplicable inclination given that she is a very cool and well-adjusted adult.
Brittanie Sheree (Cherokee)
Brittanie Sheree, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, is a versatile artist who focuses on blending humor and history. Brittanie created the highly-rated French Quarter Dark History Comedy Walking Tour in New Orleans, which challenges stereotypes by providing a humorous look at dark historical tales. In 2016, her friends encouraged her to try stand-up comedy and since then she has performed across New York City, around the US, and taken her act internationally to Edinburgh Fringe and headlining at the Athens English Comedy Club. Brittanie also created her own solo show, It’s Brittanie B****! A fun and sometimes sad look at her life sung through Britney Spears songs. Her first short film Dear John, a satirical short about the true story between Pocahontas and John Smith, premiered during LA Skins Fest in 2023 at the TCL Chinese Theatre.
You’ve also seen her on your television acting in popular shows like Better Call Saul and Grey’s Anatomy. As a writer, comedian, actor, filmmaker, and business owner, Brittanie starts every project with the same goal: How can I trick people into learning by making them laugh? When she’s not creating, you can catch her walking her rescue dog, Montee.
Bre Skye (Haudenosaunee)
Bre Skye is a writer born and raised in Niagara Falls, New York. She belongs to the Lower Cayuga band of Six Nations of the Grand River and is passionate about telling Black and Haudenosaunee stories of the Rust Belt. Bre is a PhD candidate in English Language and Literature at Cornell University. She has a background in teaching literature and creative writing, from K-12 summer camps to early college. After earning her master’s degree in 2021, Bre moved to Los Angeles to hone her screenwriting craft and use her academic experience to provide script consultation to industry professionals. She most recently participated in the 7th Annual Native American Feature Film Writers Lab. Bre enjoys writing hometown stories of resistance and building humor and magic out of the mundane.
The Native American Media Alliance (NAMA) advocates for Native American
representation in the entertainment industry. This initiative functions as a resource for industry personnel to work with Native Americans who have an authentic voice for film, television and new media. The Native American Media Alliance is a project of the Barcid Foundation; a non-profit organization that focuses on multimedia programming in
indigenous communities.
For more information, please visit our website www.nama.media or email contact@nama.media.
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