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Sheila Curran Bernard is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning writer and filmmaker with credits on nearly 50 hours of prime time broadcast and theatrical programming, work that is often leveraged to serve as the centerpiece of public engagement and education efforts. She produced, directed and wrote two films for the acclaimed civil rights history, Eyes on the Prize; was series writer on the six-hour history I'll Make Me a World; series development writer on the six-hour This Far by Faith; and writer of the four-hour series School: The Story of American Public Education. Bernard also wrote the feature documentary Slavery by Another Name, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas A. Blackmon. Also currently in distribution are three projects in which she was involved: Backpack Full of Cash, an important look a the real cost of efforts to privatize public education; Jerusalem, filmed for IMAX and giant screen theaters; and Inside Story, a science-based dramatic feature produced by Discovery Learning Alliance and Quizzical Pictures.
Bernard is the author of Documentary Storytelling, a pioneering work on the use of dramatic storytelling tools to strengthen nonfiction media. Now going into its fifth edition, the book has been translated into Portuguese, Korean, Chinese, Polish, and Japanese with an Arabic edition due out in 2020. With Kenn Rabin, she is also the author of Archival Storytelling, a look at the challenges media makers (fiction and nonfiction, Hollywood and independent) face in finding and licensing third-party visuals and music; the second edition was published in May 2020. She has led master classes in documentary storytelling in Poland, Norway, Belgium, the United States, and online; has been a juror for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Sheffield DocFest, Camerimage, and others; and has reviewed funding proposals for agencies including the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has been honored with residencies at the MacDowell Colony for the Arts and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In 2016, she was awarded a prestigious New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship in Playwriting/Screenwriting, as well as its Geri Ashur Screenwriting Award. Bernard holds a B.S. in Communication, magna cum laude, from Boston University, and an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from Goddard College. In 2005, she was the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies at Princeton University. Since 2008, in addition to her work as a filmmaker, she's been a faculty member at the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY), where she is a tenured associate professor in the Department of History and the Documentary Studies Program and director of the Institute for History and Public Engagement. She is a recipient of the University’s President's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities and the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities (2016-17). |
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Books & ArticlesInternational best-selling author and educator on fiction and nonfiction storytelling and more.
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Film & TelevisionEmmy and Peabody Award-winning writer and producer, and a jurist/presenter at festivals.
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DramaWriter of short and full-length works chosen for festivals in New York and New England.
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