Monica Cecilia Lucas

Monica Cecilia Lucas is a neurodivergent, Puerto Rican screenwriter who hails from suburban California. Raised by a career-military father and a New Yorican mother, Monica lived a sheltered childhood of strictly enforced rules. As a teenager, she rebelled the best way she knew how: by moving to rural Ohio, where she sank deep into the world of libertarian politics. After receiving her BA in Political Science, she relocated to Washington, DC where she spent four years as a political activist working in the U.S. Department of State and for various nonprofits and think tanks. Disillusioned by the 2016 election, she abandoned her political ambitions and moved to Los Angeles, where she received her MFA in Writing for Screen and Television from USC. 

Although she left politics, Monica is still heavily invested in social and political change, and believes that stories are a far more powerful way of influencing hearts and minds than white papers and politically motivated blog posts. She hopes to use film and TV as a platform to tell meaningful stories that promote empathy for underrepresented populations like women, people of color, and folks with disabilities.

These ideals are reflected in Monica’s writing, which often centers around Latina women and girls wrestling back power from the systems that seek to diminish them. Her stylistic character dramas have earned her recognition as the 2021 JHRTS Feature Drama Winner, a finalist in the Moving Picture Institute’s Short Film Lab, and a runner-up for the 2022 Hollywood Radio and TV Society Foundation Fellowship. She is also a semi-finalist in the 2023 Women in Film x Black List Episodic Lab, and is a recipient of Inevitable Foundation’s Accelerate Fellowship. 

Monica currently has her first hour-long pilot in development and is co-writing an upcoming narrative podcast. She’s repped by RBEL Agency and Elevate.