We were lucky to catch up with Nicole D. Sconiers recently and have shared our conversation below.

Nicole, thanks for taking the time to share your story with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I was in my early twenties when I realized I wanted to pursue a creative path. I had graduated from Hampton University a few years prior with a BA in English and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my degree. I think I was afraid to call myself a writer or to believe that I could sustain myself with an artistic career. I was working as a managing editor at a Black-owned newspaper in Baltimore but feeling unfulfilled. I would come home from work at night and write screenplays, even though I had no clue how to do it and didn’t even know proper script format. A year later, I quit my job and hopped a Greyhound Bus to California in hopes of becoming a screenwriter.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m the author of “Escape from Beckyville: Tales of Race, Hair and Rage.” I started writing this collection of short speculative fiction while pursuing an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. I also write horror and sci-fi short stories and screenplays. My sci-fi feature film “Spectacle” was a finalist for the prestigious 2022 ScreenCraft Sci-Fi & Fantasy script competition.

My brand is quirky Black girl horror. I love seeing complex, insecure women of color navigating hellscapes and drawing on an inner resilience they didn’t know they had. Writing horror, speculative fiction and sci-fi allows me to examine social justice issues in a meaningful, nuanced way.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Ever since I first hopped a Greyhound Bus from Pennsylvania to California more than twenty years ago, I have been trying to “make it” in the entertainment industry as a screenwriter. I was the queen of networking. I would go to industry events and clubs by myself with my business card in one hand and my screenplay in the other. I’ve had scripts optioned several times but the funding would fall through and they would never get produced. It’s easy to lose heart when you’re working so hard to put meaningful work into the world but you keep facing closed door after closed door.

In spite of the “nos,” in spite of the barriers to success that I encountered in my 20-plus years of struggling to make it as a writer, I never gave up. Persistence pays. 2023 was a breakthrough year for me. “A Mother’s Intuition,” a screenplay that I worked on, had its world premiere at the esteemed American Black Film Festival in June and aired July 23 on TV One. My short story “A Bird Sings by the Etching Tree” will appear in “Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror,” edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams. The book will be available October 3, 2023 from Random House.

I would encourage anyone with a dream to keep going. All the hours you spend writing, dreaming, creating are seeds that you sow. You never know how they’re going to come back to you. You just have to keep expecting a harvest.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Representation drives my creative journey. I grew up reading Stephen King and Dean Koontz and fell in love with horror at an early age. But I never saw any characters who looked like me in my favorite stories. I’d love to see more Black women heroines in horror and sci-fi novels and movies.

I recently moderated a panel at Readercon on Octavia Butler’s cinematic universe and an attendee suggested that Octavia’s works could be produced independently. His observation is a microcosm of a larger problem. Black filmmakers and Black-led projects are expected to subsist on micro budgets or crowdfund to get their works produced.

I am inspired by Issa Rae’s journey. She created the wildly popular “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl,” which was a hit on YouTube, and she was able to leverage her audience and make the studios come to her. Boss moves! I would love to have my own production company one day and invest in compelling projects about the Black experience.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nicolesconiers.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicoledsconiers
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NicoleDSconiers
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolesconiers