A close-up portrait of a woman with short, curly black hair, brown eyes, and light makeup, standing indoors near a dark-colored wall, wearing a sleeveless black top.

■ KACI HAMILTON (she/her/hers) is a Jamaican actor, writer, producer, and director, and a graduate of the William Esper Studio in New York. She made her stage debut as Tituba in The Crucible with Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska, and as Katherine/Boy with Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre’s production of Henry V. Select credits include the AFI FEST short In Foreign, the immigrant narrative Getaway, the period western The Dying Cowboy, consecutive productions of The Winter’s Tale playing Hermione and Paulina, and a workshop of King Lear opposite Denis O’Hare.

In 2022, she produced and launched her own podcast, Jamaican Me Sleepy, narrating classic bedtime stories and fairy tales. Her first short, Toast, an Afrofuturistic tale shot entirely on smartphone, was selected for the SmartPhilm Festival (DC) and the Royal Cocoa International Film Festival (Nigeria), and shortlisted for the Pebbles Underground Film and Video Art Festival (Toronto), SmaphoFilm International Smartphone Film Festival (Japan), and the Mykonos Biennale (Greece). Currently she can be seen in commercial spots for Lexus and E*TRADE.

With a master's degree in poetry from Hunter College, Kaci is published in the Alfred A. Knopf anthology Killer Verse: Poems of Murder and Mayhem, and had stints at Picador, Interview, Islands, and Caribbean Travel + Life. Since pivoting to screenwriting, she has been accepted to the 2025 Stowe TV Writers Room, the 2023 Stowe Story Labs June Narrative Lab, the 2023 Athena Film Festival Writers Lab, and was a finalist for the 2023 SAGIndie Screenwriting Fellowship and quarterfinalist for the 2026 Black Boy Writes & Black Girl Writes Mentorship Initiative. She is currently the recipient of the 2025 inaugural AMC Networks Athena Emerging Writers Fellowship, which awarded a one-week shadow of the Dark Winds writers’ room, and meetings with executives in scripted development. An avid traveller, Kaci has lived in Colombia, Belgium, Alaska, New Orleans, China, New York, Orlando, and Hawai'i. She currently lives in Los Angeles.