Ursula K. Le Guin once wrote that it is the responsibility of artists to spark the imagination and help us envision alternatives to how we live. This is a belief that Bruklyn strives to uphold with her work. Bruklyn Miller (b. 1997) is a Black, queer Southern writer, filmmaker, and photographer based in Durham, North Carolina. Driven by an interest in history, Black literature, technology, nature, and perception, her work imagines new worlds that challenge inherited ideologies and expands the idea of what’s possible. By bringing life to overlooked and essential aspects of the African American experience, Bruklyn creates narratives that interrogates systems of power, inherited identity, and the radical act of imagination as a tool for Black survival and transformation.

She earned her bachelor’s degree from Meredith College before attending the New York Film Academy in South Beach, Miami. A leap of faith that set her on the path to directing. While there, she wrote and directed Celestial, a psychological thriller exploring the stigma surrounding mental illness in the Black community. Celestial would later win the Grand Prize at the 2020 Miami Film Festival’s CinemaSlam Competition. After graduating, Bruklyn returned to North Carolina and became a fellow with White Elephant Group’s Short Film Lab, where she wrote and directed Sambo, now streaming on kweliTV. She also co-wrote Kingfish: The Story of Kenny Washington with The BLK Originals in partnership with the LA Rams, which was awarded a 2023 Bronze Clio Sports Award. 

Influenced by artists such as Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Wong Kar-wai, Jordan Peele, and Ryan Coogler, Bruklyn draws from genre, speculative fiction, archival material, and visual experimentation to center Black, Brown, and queer lives. Her work challenges dominant narratives of power, visibility, and belonging, treating imagination as both a political and spiritual practice. One that is capable of opening new ways of seeing, being, and relating with one another.