Melissa Johnson is an Emmy nominated and Academy Award Shortlisted writer and director based in Los Angeles. She tells emotional stories about personal identity, the wilderness, sports, and rites of passage through an irreverent, often humorous lens.
Melissa brings the social commentary and portraiture of her documentary films into her scripted work. Her docs have appeared on Showtime, ESPN, and MTV and have won top awards at the Tribeca Film Festival, Outfest and San Francisco IndieFest among others worldwide. NO LOOK PASS, about a Burmese-American basketball star grappling with her sexual identity, was selected by the U.S. State Department for the American Film Showcase. Melissa directed the Emmy-nominated film, TRANSFORMATION alongside Katelyn Howes through their company, 1/27 Pictures. The film follows a group of transgender youth who find the resources and safety to express their true selves. After airing on MTV, the film has garnered over one million views on YouTube.
She has been named a finalist three times by Sundance’s Episodic Labs and placed in Austin Film Festival’s screenwriting competition as well as CineStory and Creative World Awards. In 2019 she was named to Harvardwood’s Most Staffable Writers List for her original pilot, OJAI VALLEY, about a teenage girl’s escape from a supernatural love cult.
Melissa’s first-person essays have appeared in The New York Times, Outside Magazine, Longreads, The Rumpus, Narratively, Salon and The Guardian, among others, including the inspiration for her autobiographical animated film, LOVE IN THE TIME OF MARCH MADNESS, about her dating life as a 6’4” tall woman — which won at Tribeca and went on to be Shortlisted for the 2016 Academy Awards. In 2024, she won a Lowell Thomas Journalism Award and was selected for Best American Food and Travel Writing by HarperCollins and editor Padma Lakshmi.
A two-time Atlantic Coast Conference basketball champion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Melissa transferred to Harvard University where she captained the team and graduated cum laude with a degree in philosophy. Once voted “Most Likely to Live in a Log Cabin”, Melissa hopes to come back in her next life as a peregrine falcon.
She is represented by Jen Au Management.
