Carol Mayes

Carol Mayes' screenplay, A SPELL ON ME, was one of the five finalists for this year's Urbanworld Film Festival's script competition. The story, a romantic comedy about love and voodoo magic, is based on Mayes' award winning short film, RITUALS, which stars Regina King, Isaiah Washington and Jenifer Lewis.

A native of New York City, Mayes wrote and directed RITUALS for Lifetime Television's annual Women's Film Festival, airing in June, 1998. Over the following year, the film screened at numerous festivals and received awards from the Toronto International Film Festival, the Urbanworld Film Festival, the Black Filmmaker's Hall of Fame and the National Black Programming Consortium's "Prized Pieces" Competition.

Mayes is currently adapting a screenplay based on the Arabesque romance novel Commitments for Black Entertainment Television. She directed the screenplay for BET's Arabesque series in the fall of 2000.

In 1998, Mayes' first feature script, ONE LOVE, was a semi-finalist for the Chesterfield Film Writer's Project, as well as the Urbanworld Film Festival's screenplay competition.

Mayes graduated from the American Film Institute in 1996, with a Master of Fine Arts in Directing. Her Second Year film, TENDRILS, was honored with several awards including a DGA Student Film Award, the CINE Eagle and was a Finalist for the 1996 Student Academy Awards. The screenplay for TENDRILS won AFI's Martin Ritt award, which included a $10,000 grant toward production.

Before attending AFI, Mayes worked for several years in television production, including as a producer for SESAME STREET. During that time, she wrote and directed short films, including VISITING LESHIA, a film currently airing on SESAME STREET.

A published writer, Mayes' screenplay of RITUALS was adapted from her short story, Just Insurance. That story won Essence Magazine's National Short Story contest in 1991 and was printed in the magazine that year.