Melody is a genre writer focused on social issues, BIPOC characters, and women protagonists. She was raised by parents who were activists and teachers in a Blerd family that loved science and literature and proved that Black people do go camping. She is currently story editor on the 22nd season of NBCUniversal’s Law & Order: SVU, and has been selected for the 2021 Sundance Episodic Lab’s new Idea Lab to develop a grounded sci-fi pilot. She started out in TV in 2019 as staff writer on the second season of the CW Network series Two Sentence Horror Stories for which she wrote two episodes. In 2020 she co-wrote a comedy sci-fi episode starring Wayne Brady for The Insiders, a new series headed by Greg Grunberg. A 2019 HBO Access Writing Fellow, Melody was winner of the 2018 Grand Jury Prize for Best Screenplay at the Urbanworld Film Festival with her dramatic feature script NORTHERN CROSS about a Black woman and Latina immigrant on the run. Her horror TV pilot, SUNDOWN, has been a Finalist for several labs. Winner of Stowe Story Lab's Tangerine Entertainment Fellowship, Melody was also selected for Meryl Streep Writers Lab and AMC Shudder Lab with her supernatural feature script THE SOUND OF DARKNESS. Her short documentary, DETAINED, which she wrote, produced and directed, received a 2018 IndieFest Award of Recognition. Writing residencies include Yaddo (2019) and La Napoule Art Foundation in France (2018).  Also an award-winning playwright, Melody received a Ford Foundation grant to travel to Rwanda to develop her play SWEET MERCY, which was later developed by NY Stage and Film, starring Danai Gurira. DAY OF RECKONING about Lucy Parsons and the early Labor Movement in the U.S., was produced in NY and won the Jane Chambers Award. Melody currently writes the comic book OMNI about a Black female doctor with super intelligence (Issues #5 - 10) published by Mark Waid at Humanoids. She is developing an original feature with Fear Works to direct in Canada in 2021. Website: www.melodyMcooper.com https://twitter.com/melodymcooper