TRAI CARTWRIGHT, MFA, is a 30-year entertainment industry veteran and writing and producing specialist. She is a screenwriter, producer, and has taught film and fiction at Colorado colleges and at writers’ and film organizations for over ten years.
Once Trai realized that being on a set wasn’t for her, she connected her childhood love of writing to a whole new career in film: development and producing.
After attending NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Trai headed for Los Angeles. During her fifteen years there, Trai was a studio level development executive who consulted on thousands of screenplays for HBO, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Universal, and New Line.
Trai was on the producing team of three independent movies (Dinner Rush, Offshore, Trap), traveled the film festival circuit, and received international distribution on all three.
She was Assistant Director of Leonardo DiCaprio’s online ventures, the Hollywood liaison for a massively multi-player online role-playing game company, and was the Manager of Fox Mobile Studios for 20th Century Fox.
As a screenwriter, four of Trai’s screenplays were optioned to Academy and Emmy award-winning producers. She was represented by CAA, Paradigm, and Nervik Management.
Upon moving to Colorado in 2007 and finding no film industry to speak of, the search was on for a new career that made use of her useless skills set. As it turns out, developing writers in Hollywood was very similar as teaching writers in Colorado!
It’s Trai’s belief that dedicating yourself to the development elements of storytelling is the key to the ultimate success of a project. She also believes that finding the right mentor is absolutely essential to speedy evolution, in-depth learning, and building your business and artistic foundation on compassion.
Once in Colorado, Trai began her career as an educator, sharing her knowledge of development, independent filmmaking, and screenwriting across the state.
She has taught creative writing (fiction/nonfiction/memoir), screenwriting, and producing at 10 Colorado colleges and universities including University of Denver and Western State Colorado University’s MFA program, as well as for dozens of writers’ conferences, writers workshops, and film organizations.
She also works individually with writers of all mediums, and countless clients have gone on to produce, publish, secure representation, and place in the top tiers of writing contests.
Beyond teaching, Trai is a deep believer in community building, and has worked tirelessly to create programming that reaches out to a range of content creators.
As a producer, Trai has worked as a development consultant on dozens of Colorado projects, and has produced:
- A feature (Stadium Anthems)
- A short documentary (We Are WIFMCO)
- Two short films (In Time; Sundown Road)
- A docu-series (Hidden Tigers),
- A web series (The Scared List)
Trai has worked with thousands Colorado screenwriters, fiction writers, and filmmakers.
To inquire about her story development services, check out her consultation website, www.craftwrite.com.