Zoe Ward
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Zoe Ward is a Michigan-born, LA-based writer-director with a passion for expansive world-building and high-stakes storytelling. She received her MFA in Directing from UCLA and has worked in writers’ rooms with Terence Winter, Larry Trilling, Michael Fuller, and Robin Veith. She recently staffed on a one-hour drama for Apple with David Matthews. Her short films have screened at Austin Film Festival and Outfest, her feature thesis script won the UCLA Producers’ Showcase, and her debut short fiction was published in Iowa Review.

She also packs an arsenal of offbeat anecdotes and niche know-how. After dropping out of high school on the morning of 9/11, Zoe toured with a punk band; traveled to Cuba; ran a farm in Connecticut; got arrested at Occupy Wall Street; and hitchhiked across Mexico and New Zealand. Along the way, she’s worked in AIDS advocacy, book publishing, fashion, and as a dog walker in NYC. Her adventurous early years set the tone for a life grounded in compassion, curiosity, and devastating sarcasm. She has two children, two dogs, and one unflappable spouse.


WRITING SAMPLES

AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

TV

OPERATION WASHTUB (one-hour drama): Under the looming threat of Soviet invasion, an FBI agent and an outlaw pilot must transform a ragtag group of rural Alaskans into elite counterintelligence operatives. Based on true events.

D.I.L.D.O. (aka Dedicated International Lethal Dames Organization) (Half-hour animated): When a kindhearted misfit is kidnapped by a dysfunctional group of female assassins, she must do the impossible — turn them into a family — in order to save her own life and take out the greatest criminal mastermind on the planet.

FILM

CRAFTY: An indie film crew tempts fate when they shoot a campy horror film about a real-life cannibal chef in the same lodge where he committed his foulest crimes. Caught in the middle of the drama is Marlo, a plucky production assistant, whose faith in the sanctity of the creative process is shattered as the crew’s misbehaviors and betrayals dovetail with the terrifying, still-present threat of a murderer in their midst.

SOFT & PINK: The bodies start piling up when Queenie Carr, a sensationally talented “girl Elvis” in 1950s New York, discovers that the men who control her career don’t have her best interests at heart. (Winner of UCLA Producers’ Showcase; Script Pipeline and ScreenCraft quarterfinalist)

PROSE

HELLO EUREKA GOODBYE (Middle Grade Fantasy Novel): As a terminally-ill teenager struggles to talk to her family about death, she stumbles into a world of perpetual darkness, whose fantastical citizens are coping with their own existential crisis. Her journey back home will become a mission to save her newfound friends as she confronts her greatest fears, discovers new joys, and decides once and for all how she wants to spend the remainder of her one precious life.

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Soft & Pink

a short film written & directed by zoe ward

 

The band hates her. Her manager refuses to let her perform her new song. Even the emcee holds a grudge against the new “girl Elvis.” But all the men in the world can’t keep down the genius, the swagger, the pure rebellious spirit of QUEENIE CARR.

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