Education
Harvard University; New York University. Tisch School of the Arts.
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Candace Allen
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She is the niece of actress and drama coach Billie Allen, and the former wife of British conductor Sir Simon Rattle. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1950 () she received her Bachelor from Harvard University before attending the New York University School of Film and Television. In the 1970s, she moved to Los Angeles, where for twenty years she worked as an assistant director on feature and television films, and later as a screenwriter.
She also set up and ran for four years a counselling group for young black women at Jordan High School in Watts.
Her first book, a fictionalized biography about the African-American female jazz trumpeter Valaida Snow, was published by Virago Press in 2004. Reviewing the novel for JazzTimes, Gwen Ansell wrote: "Allen engages with what it might feel like to think through and play a solo.
Tour depressing, racist Southern towns. Haggle with agents and managers.
She treats Snow first and foremost as a musician.
The wry, weary wit of backstage conversation rings true and the details play out before a fascinating panorama of pre-1960s jazz and vaudeville stages. In this use of close-up against rich, intensely visual backdrop, in frequent crosscutting and flashback scenes, Allen the screenwriter is very evident. And while the book remains a romance, it"s tougher than most and definitely worth reading."
Allen"s must recent work, the acclaimed Soul Music: the Pulse of Race and Music, which has been described as "part-travelogue, part-memoir, part-manifesto", was published by Gibson Square Press in 2012.
Through the organization "Americans Abroad for Obama" Allen was an active campaigner for the election of Barack Obama in 2008, and subsequently became a frequent commentator on United States culture, race and politics on radio and television
She writes regularly for The Guardian of London and other newspapers.
Achievements
Membership
She was the first African-American woman to be a member of the Directors Guild of America. She became the first African-American female member of the Directors Guild of America.
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Born
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Nationality
United States