Raven Jackson

Raven Jackson was born in 1990 in Tennessee,^[1] to a mother from Mississippi.^[2] She is a native of Clarksville, Tennessee,^[3] and "grew up fishing on the Cumberland River".^[2] She graduated from Austin Peay State University in 2012,^[4] and she obtained her first MFA at The New School's writing program.^[5] Despite being uncertain about filmmaking without a background of technical experience, she decided to apply to New York University,^[2] and she obtained another MFA from New York University Tisch School of the Arts's graduate film program.^[5][4]

Her NYU thesis film was called Nettles,^[6] and it appeared at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival.^[7] She later released another short film, A Guide To Breathing Underwater (2018).^[8] She and Leigh Ann Biety co-wrote "The Myth of California", a 2022 episode of the Apple TV+ series Surface.^[9]

Her feature film debut All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, which she directed and wrote, was released in 2023.^[10][2] She then received several personal nominations, including the 2023 Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Director, the 2023 Chicago Film Critics Association Milos Stehlik Award for Breakthrough Filmmaker, and the 2024 Black Reel Award for Outstanding Emerging Director and for Outstanding Breakthrough Screenwriter.^[11][12][13] In 2024, she directed the music video for Common's song "Dreamin'".^[14] In 2025, she was awarded a Film Independent Amplifier Fellowship^[10] and a Guggenheim Fellowship,^[15] and in 2026, she was named a United States Artists (USA) Fellow.^[16]

She is also a poet, with one of her poems having the same name as her feature film debut.^[2]