Oneika Mays

I can't double dutch but still think I should keep my Black card. That tension—between who I am and who I'm supposed to be—is what I write about. I'm a New Jersey native, storyteller, and mindfulness teacher who makes television and film exploring identity, belonging, and the performance of self. I take the work seriously but refuse to take myself too seriously. My half-hour dramedy pilot BLUR - But You Don't Sound Black follows 15-year-old Makeba Roosevelt in 1985 New Jersey, navigating the specific hell of being simultaneously too Black for white spaces and "not Black enough" for Black ones. It won Grand Jury Prize for Best Unproduced TV Pilot at Sherman Oaks Film Festival, was a finalist at LA International Screenplay Festival's Diversity Initiative and New Faces New Voices, and earned RECOMMEND ratings from Shore Scripts. The show explores what I lived: there was only one acceptable way to be Black in 1985, and I wasn't it. I'm also developing a feature drama where six Black Gen X college friends return to a summer house on the anniversary of a friend's death. Grief, betrayal, and the gap between who they promised to be and who they've become force them to reckon with whether their friendship can survive middle age. Think The Big Chill meets The Best Man. Beyond screenwriting, I've spent over a decade teaching mindfulness—including at Rikers Island—and facilitating globally at Lincoln Center, the Genome Project, and beyond. I'm a yoga teacher and mindfulness coach on Yoga International and Embodied Philosophy. My memoir Sit With Me: A No-BS Journey to Mindfulness and Meditation debuts with HarperOne in March 2026. The through-line across all my work: I write and teach about authenticity in spaces that demand performance. Whether it's a meditation hall, a writers' room, or a high school cafeteria in 1985, I'm interested in what it costs to show up as yourself when the world expects you to be someone else. I'm building a body of work that centers Black voices navigating cultural complexity, and I'm looking for collaborators who want to make films and television that reveal rather than explain—work that trusts audiences and honors the intelligence of lived experience.