SILAS HOWARD
CONTACT:
FELICE ECKER // PUBLICIST
DAVID ELKIN // PUBLICIST
ROSIE BOYD // PUBLICIST
Silas Howard is an award-winning director and writer with a singular gift for crafting widely untold or underrepresented stories. As revealed in his Emmy Award-winning work for such groundbreaking series as “Transparent” and “Pose,” the Los Angeles-based filmmaker brings both uncompromising vision and emotional insight to each of his projects, profoundly illuminating the experience of those who live outside the norm.
Most recently, Howard has taken the helm as director on several TV series entirely in line with his storytelling ethos. On Apple TV+’s “Dickinson,” a historical comedy/drama based on the life of Emily Dickinson, he’s helped lend depth and texture to the show’s inspired exploration of its title character’s seldom-recognized queerness. A family comedy following a trio of siblings after their father’s untimely death, Freeform’s “Everything’s Gonna Be Okay” finds Howard working to present an authentic and layered portrayal of people with autism—an endeavor that involves his close collaboration with Kayla Cromer, the first actor on the autism spectrum to play a lead role in a TV show. And in his work on Netflix’s “Grand Army” (a drama centered on students at a Brooklyn Heights public high school, with nearly half of the cast made up of that very demographic), he’s drawn from his past experience in teaching at an at-risk youth shelter in Harlem.
A founding member of the seminal queer-punk band Tribe 8, Howard got his start in filmmaking by teaming up with artist Harry Dodge to create a feature film called By Hook or By Crook. Despite a complete lack of background in film, the two collaborators wrote, directed, and starred in the movie, driven by an overwhelming urge to communicate their experience in San Francisco’s queer community. Released in 2001, By Hook or By Crook premiered at Sundance Film Festival and won a host of prestigious awards (including the audience award at SXSW Film Festival and at Outfest), ultimately creating a powerful cultural impact that still endures today.
Following the breakout success of By Hook or By Crook, Howard headed to UCLA to get his M.F.A. in film. During his studies, he co-wrote a script for a biopic on jazz musician and trans pioneer Billy Tipton, an effort that earned Howard fellowships from the Nantucket Film Festival/Screenwriters Colony and the Film Independent Directors Lab. As he balanced his passion projects with work in directing music videos for artists like Peaches and Justin Vivian Bond, Howard received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2015, then made an auspicious leap into TV directing.
The first trans filmmaker ever to direct an episode of Amazon Studios’ “Transparent,” Howard joined the Emmy- and Golden Globe Award-winning show’s coterie of directors in 2015, soon adding such series as “This Is Us,” “Tales of the City,” and “High Maintenance” to his credentials. He also served as both director and executive-producer for FX’s “Pose,” which earned him a GLAAD Award and Peabody Award in addition to an Emmy. In the meantime, he directed A Kid Like Jake (starring Claire Danes, Jim Parsons, and Octavia Spencer), a 2018 feature film that premiered at Sundance and won the Next Wave Award at the Provincetown Film Festival.
With his Billy Tipton film now in development, Howard is currently at work on an eclectic lineup of projects, including an LGBTQ-focused horror movie, a film about the first exotic-dancers union in San Francisco, and a documentary on ball-culture icon/Paris Is Burning star Dorian Corey. In all of his ongoing TV and film work, Howard remains wholly committed to telling marginalized stories with nuance, complexity, and emotional truth.