Recently named to the Independent Film Channel's list of emerging "Icons", Tracie Laymon is an independent screenwriter and director hailing from Austin, Texas.
Tracie moved from Texas to Russia at 14 to attend the Anglo-American School of Moscow. Back in Texas, she was accepted into the magnet program at Bellaire Foreign Language Academy, focusing on Russian language studies, and later returned to Russia again as a foreign exchange student while still in high school. At age 17, she was involved in a near-fatal car accident in Texas, broke her back and learned how to walk again. This experience has shaped some of her storytelling and was the inspiration behind her first production company, Fractured and Fused Films, which she formed as a teenager and used to make her first two short films. Tracie worked as a photographer and video journalist for Time Warner News while studying Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin.
Tracie's directorial projects have won numerous jury awards at South by Southwest, Las Vegas International Film Festival, Houston International Film Festival, Memphis International Film Festival and others. Her shorts have also premiered at Fantastic Fest and the Dallas International Film Festival. In 2009, she received a nomination for the Milan International Film Festival Award (considered to be the Italian 'Oscar' of independent film), followed by her winning the Jury Award for Short Film of the Year from the Women's Image Network. In 2011, Tracie directed the web-based sitcom "Goodnight Burbank", featuring Dominic Monaghan ("Lost", "Lord of the Rings") and Laura Silverman ("Curb Your Enthusiasm", "The Sarah Silverman Program"). The show premiered on Hulu, where it was immediately acquired by Mark Cuban on its first day. He went on to air the entire season on his TV Channel HDNet. Tracie wrote and directed a featured segment of the anthology film "Girls!Girls!Girls!" and has completed numerous rewrites on other projects. Most recently, Tracie has written a both dramatic and comedic screenplay to serve as her feature-length directorial debut. The script won Best Screenplay at the LA Comedy Festival in December 2013 and has advanced to the Top 1.5% of the BlueCat Screenplay Competition in 2014 (out of over 4,060 feature-length entries). She and her producers plan to shoot the film in 2016.
