Melanie Martinez

Melanie is a film and TV writer who grew up among a few pioneering Nuyorican families who moved to Long Island, where she had her first brush with showbiz when a casting call in her diverse neighborhood landed her smiling face on a box of Girl Scout cookies. Melanie received a BA in Sociology from Harvard, where she wrote for the LET’S GO travel series. Merging her interest in social issues with her passion for storytelling, Melanie began her TV career in MSNBC’s 24-hour newsroom before working as an Associate Producer for Michael Moore’s THE AWFUL TRUTH. Melanie moved to England to pursue a Screenwriting M.A. at the UK’s acclaimed National Film and Television School and spent 15 years in London, where she developed projects for British TV and was lead writer on web series SOFIA’S DIARY and AISLING’S DIARY. In late 2015, Melanie and her family traded East London for Westside Los Angeles. Her experiences as a college First Gen, a Suburbi-Rican and an American in Britain have developed her love for character-driven dramas that follow the adventures of misguided outsiders discovering a sense of belonging in unexpected ways. She recently applied her instinct for smart, big-hearted stories to feature TV romances CALLING FOR LOVE and THE ENGAGEMENT BACK-UP (UPtv). Melanie was in the 2022 NHMC Series Script Writers Program and is currently part of the 2023 DET Writing Program (extended due to the strike). When she’s not writing, Melanie is busy learning Dungeons and Dragons lore with her son and helping her daughter in and out of her tutus.