Sharon D. Johnson

Sharon D. Johnson has been an active member of the Writers Guild of America, West, Inc. (WGAW) since 1993, with produced prime-time network television credits in half-hour comedies on the ABC; FOX; and UPN networks, and paid feature film writing experience. She is a currently (2018) round-2 semi-finalist in the MACRO Episodic Lab. Johnson was a 1999 candidate for the WGAW Board of Directors, and Chair of the WGAW Committee of Black Writers from 1999-2003. In September 2000, she was appointed by the Guild's Executive Director, John McClean, to travel to Washington, DC to accept the U.S. Department of Labor EPIC award on the Guild's behalf, which recognized the labor union for its exemplary efforts toward greater diversity and equal employment opportunity for its membership and in the greater entertainment industry. She produced and directed a pilot episode performance of her original half-hour comedy series, FAMILY BUSINESS, at the Writers Guild Theater in 1997. Her short play, LEGACY, was produced at the Hudson Theater in the 2014 Acting Out INK Fest! festival of women playwrights, produced by 2 Cents Theater in association with the Los Angeles Women's Theater Project. Johnson has appeared on news and information programs on ABC, BET, KCAL, KCET, Telemundo, and LA Talk Live discussing diversity issues in the entertainment industry and greater Los Angeles. She is also a widely published editorial and feature writer with articles in The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Sentinel, Emmy magazine, Written By, Barnard magazine, and Essence, to name a few. In 2012, Johnson earned her PhD in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. This complements her MA in Media Studies from the New School (1988), and her BA in the Program in the Arts--Writing from Barnard College (1985), all of which expand her writing about arts and entertainment. For example, her essay, "Conscious Daughters: Psychological Migration, Individuation, and the Declaration of Black Female Identity in Daughters of the Dust" is included in the forthcoming University of South Carolina Press anthology, WE CARRY THESE MEMORIES INSIDE OF WE: DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST AND THE BLACK ART AESTHETIC OF JULIE DASH, commemorating filmmaker Julie Dash's seminal cinematic work. As a Lecturer at California State University, Northridge, Johnson has taught screenwriting in the Cinema & Television Arts department, and courses in African American Literature and Black Pop Culture in the department of Africana Studies. Johnson currently (Fall 2018) teaches her original senior seminar at Emerson College, Los Angeles, titled "Race and Gender Representation in Screen Adaptations," which will focus on those representations in the screen adaptations of Their Eyes Were Watching God, for colored girls, and Black Panther.