Killing Skye Biography

 

Skye Dent – Biography 

Skye Dent is a relentlessly-single, multi-raced soul (Black/Latina/Choctaw) raised in the dangerous then predominantly black-latino projects of Roxbury, Boston with the irrepressible impulse and tantalizing talent to be a writer.  As she puts it, “Writing is, was, and always will be…my morning cup of Joe, the path for a teenager to possibly escape poverty/violence, and a way to understand and help people of all backgrounds empathize with unfamiliar worlds, be they a continent or a bus ride away.”

In fact, it was because Skye regularly escaped and hid out reading in the Boston Public Library after the murder of her 15-year-old brother, that junior high English teacher Jean Rowen found her there, discovered her reading and writing abilities, and arranged for Skye to take the A Better Chance test. 

ABC arranged for Skye to spend the next three years at Northfield Mt. Hermon high school.  She had no idea how prestigious or expensive NMH was until the daughter of an Oscar winning actor came from Hollywood…with her horses.  Skye went on to Brown Univ., Obtained a BA in Latin American Studies and then to Univ. of Missouri where she obtained her journalism, M.A.  

She then enjoyed a decade as a crime journalist for The Cape Cod Times, AP, The Oakland Tribune, and CBS News in NYC and CBS writing about subjects ranging from the agony of being a crime victim… to the thrill of flying 800 mph upside down and right stuff over in a two-person Air Force F14… to the simplistic joy of ice skating on cranberry bogs. 

In need of writers who knew story and plot, Discovery Channel then enticed her into writing/co-directing several documentaries and interstitial short films about joint feature Paramount films.  So, relocation to Hell-A was the next step to writing for TV and Film.

A script called Be Bop Blues about three Belizean teens who form a Punta Rock band got her into the ABC/Disney Scriptwriting Fellows Program.  But, it was really meeting Helen Levitt, one of the oldest living writers blacklisted during McCarthyism, that provided her with the best writing teacher ever.  Yes, a second white female who society tried to keep down helped Skye go to places where neither of them had gone before.

Working on the Disney Lot and then later the Paramount lot with TV and film writers made Skye realize that she, too, had the ability to write fantastically-original TV and film scripts about oftentimes dangerous or even hilarious worlds that simultaneously entertain and challenge audiences.  All she needed was a chance.  Star Trek producers Jeri Taylor and Brannon Braga gave her that chance with an episode of a Star Trek series, from which sprung a recurring alien race, The Vidians.  It aired to rave reviews. Another first.  Skye became the first black female writer of a Star Trek franchise.  But, black females were not as welcome in entertainment as they are now.  Black lives didn’t matter then.  So, her career languished with sporadic bursts.

Since then, she’s worked for two primetime series (The Burning Zone, Dirty Sexy Money) and learned directing while working with Charles Burnett on two of his films.  She wrote the Calvin Simmons Story for Showtime.  Two spec screenplays include a South African period piece of struggle, a fire-fighting drama, a Sundance semi-finalist science-based romantic comedy (Michael Cuesta attached), and a father-daughter auto-racing story that Jeffrey Katzenberg described as “the script Tom Cruise shoulda’ waited for.”

Because life in Los Angeles put her in touch with several veterans from a regional jump zone, she started to realize the importance of the military.  So, she moved east and from 2010 to 2012, she gave back to the military by teaching them, their spouses, and their offspring at Fayetteville State University, an HBCU/UNC next to Ft. Bragg that services all people as well as all people military in the Fayetteville section of North Carolina.

There, she co-created the journalism/scriptwriting division of the school of communications, a program that premiered Hollywood feature films for college students, as well as creating the five-day FSU Student White House Invitational 2012 (financed by a collaboration of friends, filmmakers, TV writers-producers (including N.C.I.S.), and journalists).  Executive Producer Tom Ortenberg kicked off the filmmaking program by premiering Spotlight in Fayetteville to a theater full of college students (many of whom brought their moms as their plus-ones).  The premiere, the followup discussion, and the fact that Spotlight won the Academy Awards Best Picture Oscar encouraged many of the students to get into entertainment.

No longer the young no-nothing that TV desired, Skye realized that if she wanted to produce and write, places like Columbia and NYU had developed the kind of production and writing divisions that she needed.  NYU paid for her entire two-year MFA degree. 

She recently optioned the rights to a courtroom drama that will change what Americans thought they knew about our country’s defining history. Optioned the rights to Sidney Poitier’s Warm December and wrote a script based on the hit.  Wrote a hour-long TV dramedy series with the sensibilities of Northern Exposure about a woman forced into investigating her possible Wampanoag roots.  And she is putting the final touches on a community policing TV crime drama based on several years of volunteering sleepless nights with an inner-city homicide team.

Over time, she’s found success in writing for film and TV by following her heart instead of a genre.  She also teaches a script writing class on line at Columbia University’s scriptwriting program.  For the wounds of a heart etched in pain by the murder of her teenage brother when they were students, leads her to both write for adults as well as give back to students.  Her references are many,but secret to protect the innocent.

Skye’s Theme Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEBlaMOmKV4

E-Mail: SkyeKnightDent@gmail.com