Shawna Baca is an award-winning writer and director. She was selected by Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett from more than 20,000 filmmakers to be part of his 2007 FOX reality show, ON THE LOT on the basis of her short film "Isabel."
Shawna received a “Mujeres Destacadas” award by La Opinion newspaper and the City of Los Angeles. She was also honored at the Latina Symposium (Washington D.C.) with an award and recognition for being a “Latina Entrepreneur,” and given a scholarship to the prestigious Tuck School of Business Executive Education Program at Dartmouth University by Latina Style magazine. She has been creating New Media content for corporate clients since 2009.
She produced a feature documentary “Laserium: Gods of Light,” and is currently developing an indie feature film, “Space for Raven.” The screenplay is a 2021 Stowe Story Labs - Selected Project, 2021 BIPOC Writer's Fellowship: Book-to-Screen - Finalist, 2021 ScreenCraft Screenwriting Lab - Quarterfinalist, 2021 New York Women's Independent Film Festival - Finalist, 2020 Austin Film Festival Second Rounder, 2020 WeScreenplay Diverse Voices - Semi-Finalist, and a 2020 Script Pipeline Feature Screenwriting Contest - Quarterfinalist.
She currently directed the pilot episode and is the Showrunner for a scripted audio podcast set in WWII and centered around four young waitress who are faced with political issues involving the Mexican Repatriation Act, Japanese Internment Camps, Indigenous issues of Citizenship and the racial tension that African Americans faced.
She is the author of the transformational memoir, “Fear Less: Conquering the Demons of Mental Purgatory," which documents her downward spiral into a panic disorder and agoraphobia at the age of 21 that left her sequestered in her home for over a year, before her Indigenous mother took her to see a Medicine Man on the Pala Indian reservation and cured her in a sweat lodge ceremony. This led her on a journey of exploration into Indigenous shamanism, spirituality and the unknown. She is a mental health advocate, Podcaster & Blogger for the FEAR LESS Society.
Her short screenplay, "What's Wrong With Me?," is an adaptation from her book FEAR LESS. The screenplay won the BEST SHORT Screenplay Award at the 2021 Black Swan International Film Festival, 2021 OTB Film Awards - Jury Award BEST SHORT Screenplay, 2021 London Indie Short Festival - Best Unproduced Script, an Outstanding Achievement Award at the 2021 World Cinema Carnival in Singapore, a 2020 London Independent Story Prize Finalist, and the 2021 Phoenix Film Festival. The screenplay made the top 10 screenplays.
Shawna was selected for the 2021-2022 Writer's Guild Foundation Veteran's Writing Program with her one hour supernatural medical drama, "Curandera," which was co-written by Dustin Paddock. She was also selected for the 2021 Coverfly Pitch Week and has participated in Film Independent’s: Project Involve: Director’s track, ABC/Disney IMPACT Workshop Director’s track, the Fox Diversity Writer’s Initiative, CBS Director’s Initiative, Producer’s Guild Diversity Workshop (Episodic Track), and has directed for the Writer’s Guild and NBC diversity showcases.
Shawna was born in east Los Angeles and is Apache, Yaqui, Spanish and French and was named after an Apache Medicine Woman who cured her late great-grandmother of an illness.