Film and Television writer AJ Bermudez bravely shares her experiences with envy and her learned understanding of deploying her "empathy muscle."
About A.J.
A. J. BERMUDEZ is an award-winning writer and director who divides her time between Los Angeles and New York. Her projects include iCON (Grand Prize Winner of the PAGE Award, 2021), The Face of the Earth (Grand Prize Winner of the Diverse Voices Award, 2018), Nightingale (Winner of the Cinequest Film Festival, 2017), and Hunt (HBMG Foundation Selection, 2017). Her work has been featured at the Yale Center for British Art, the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, the LGBT Toronto Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and in a number of literary publications, including McSweeney’s, The Masters Review, Boulevard, Columbia Journal, The Chicago Review, Fiction International, The Offing, Gertrude Press, Hobart, Black Static, Concīs, Sick Lit, White Hot, Cheap Pop, Exposition Review, Lunch Ticket, Baltimore Review, Story, and elsewhere.
In addition to writing and filmmaking, Bermudez is also a former boxer and EMT, and her work gravitates toward contemporary intersections of power, privilege, and place. She is a Writer’s Digest National Award Winner, nominee for the Spotlight Culture & Heritage Award, winner of the 2018 WeScreenplay Grand Prize, 2021 finalist for the One Story Adina Talve-Goodman Fellowship, winner of the 2021 Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, and winner of the 2022 Iowa Short Fiction Award. She was recently announced as Co-Editor of The Maine Review, is co-host of the podcast Two-Person Book Club, and currently serves as Artistic Director of The American Playbook. Her first solo-written feature film premiered in 2018, and she was named one of the ISA’s Top 25 Writers to Watch in 2019. Her first book, Stories No One Hopes Are About Them, will be published by University of Iowa Press in fall 2022.
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