Leslie Gee

Leslie Gee (Caddo) is a graduate from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she received a BFA in Creative Writing. Throughout her writing career, she has been honored with several prestigious awards, including the Truman Capote Grant in 2005, the Tribal College Journal’s Writer of the Year in 2005 and the Native Writer Award at the 2005 Taos Summer Writer’s Conference. Upon graduation Leslie was selected to participate in the ABC/Disney Summer Film Institute and was one of eight selected in the United States to receive the 2005-2006 Disney Talent Development Grant for which she wrote an original screenplay, the Beaded Belt. For her original screenplay, Washita Lovechild, Leslie received the Sundance Film Institute’s Ford Fellowship. In addition to screenwriting, Leslie is a published writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Selections of her work have appeared in the New Plains Review, the Tribal College Journal and the Institute of American Indian Arts Anthologies, Bone Light, Neon and Chlorophyll and Fish Head Soup.

Leslie spent time at both the University of Oklahoma and the University of Central Oklahoma studying English Literature and Native American Studies. In 2002, she completed an internship with the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers in Washington D.C. Throughout college in Santa Fe, she worked for Intermountain Youth Centers with Native American youth from the Bureau of Prisons System as they transitioned back into the community.

In 2006 Leslie returned to Oklahoma and began work with the Citizen Potawatomi Nation’s Tribal Heritage Project, a film and video based effort to research and document tribal family histories to help foster cultural preservation and education. She served as researcher, writer, editor and Production Manager for the Family Video Series and the Veteran’s Tribute Series.

Leslie’s background in film and video and has allowed her to work with the National Museum of the American Indian, the Oklahoma Gazette and the American Indian Cultural Center and Museum.