raven jackson

Raven Jackson is an award-winning filmmaker, poet, and photographer from Tennessee. Her work often explores landscapes of indefinable experiences and emotions, intimacy, connection, and the body’s relationship to nature. Recently nominated for a Film Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature and a Gotham Award for Breakthrough Director, Raven’s debut narrative film, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, made in partnership with Tender, PASTEL, and A24, world-premiered in the US Dramatic Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, and was named one of the top ten movies of the year by The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and RogerEbert.com. The film has screened at the New York Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, San Sebastián International Film Festival, BFI London, AFI Fest, and more. A featured artist on Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, Jackson was recently named a 2026 United States Artists Fellow and a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow.

She has served as a Story Editor for HBO's adaptation of Sula, based on Toni Morrison's novel, and co-wrote an episode of the Apple TV+ series, Surface. She’s currently an inaugural Black Film Project Fellow at Harvard University and is part of the current class of the ReFrame Rise cohort. She has been a Sundance Momentum Fellow, a Film Independent Amplifier Fellow, and a Rideback Rise Resident. Stories From a Place Where All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, the companion book for her debut feature, is available from A24. Her photography can be found in the book, as well as in BOMB Magazine. She is a Cave Canem fellow and holds MFAs from New York University's Graduate Film Program and the New School's Writing Program. Her chapbook of poetry, little violences, is available from Cutbank Literary Magazine.