Debbie Castanha

I am the product of America: muscle, bone, and blood, bound by a patchwork quilt of emotions and learned knowledge, framed by change and movement -- eight states, ten homes, eleven schools.

I was born to teenaged parents and learned in newly desegregated elementary schools in Mobile. I landed in California in high school, and picked apples, tossed pizza, and cleaned houses to pay for college. After years working and raising a family, when I found the need to share my voice, I was drawn to the collaborative nature of film, and its ability to dig deep into life's complications with grounded, thematically-driven stories focused on characters and relationships.

I’m an employee, a wife, mother, daughter, and sister. But when I’m not, I’m a broken-down mailman, a teenage pianist, a loud-mouthed plumber, a lovelorn cowboy, a bitter, alcoholic father, or a philosophy student with wanderlust.

Having no work experience or formal education in writing make a career in screenwriting even more challenging, but threads of optimism are embedded in the patchwork quilt of my life: I’m a Black List Lab alum, a two-time Academy Nicholl Semi-Finalist, a Finalist of multiple screenwriting competitions, and have contracted two open writing assignments on my own. If there’s one thing that writing has taught me, it’s that there’s no one I can’t be and nothing I can’t do.