Traci A. Curry
Traci A. Curry is an Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker, producer, showrunner, and writer of powerful stories. She has spent more than two decades creating compelling, in-depth narratives for multi-media platforms across both long and short form. Most recently, Curry spent 18 months directing National Geographic’s upcoming five-part documentary series Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time. This meticulously researched series culls thousands of hours of archival footage, combined with first-person accounts, to bring revelatory insight into the causes and consequences of Hurricane Katrina two decades later.
Alongside Stanley Nelson, Curry co-directed and served as producer for “Attica,” a Showtime documentary which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature in 2022 and premiered opening night at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival. The documentary revisited the largest prison uprising in U.S. history and the brutality of state violence on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy. The documentary was selected for the 2021 DOC NYC feature film shortlist; earned three 2022 Critics Choice Awards nominations, including for Best Documentary Feature and Best Director; won the 2022 Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize and the 2022 Award for Social Justice from the African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA); and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary.
In 2023, Curry served as showrunner of Onyx Collective’s Emmy®-nominated eight-part documentary series “Searching for Soul Food.” The series chronicles iconic Black chef Alisa Reynolds as she explores the origin stories of soul food around the world. Previously, Curry worked as a producer on the 2020 ESPN “30 for 30” documentary “VICK,” a comprehensive look back at each chapter of the rise, fall, and polarizing return of the standout former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, Michael Vick. She also served as producer of “BOSS: The Black Experience in Business,” which aired on PBS and revealed the untold story of African American entrepreneurship.
Her broad experience also includes serving as a producer for several national cable news shows, and her work has been featured across a variety of networks, including PBS, ESPN, MSNBC, BET, HGTV, TV One, CNN, and ABC. Curry is the founder and owner of her production company, B.Free Media, named to honor Curry’s hero, pioneering journalist Ida B. Wells and her newspaper, “The Memphis Free Speech,” which was burned in 1892 following Wells’ groundbreaking exposé of lynching in the South.
A resident of Brooklyn, New York, Curry received a master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism, and a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Pennsylvania.