TANYA SARACHO
Tanya Saracho’s journey began on a table. “I started with my parents plopping me on top of the dining room table to tell a joke or recite a poem—they made me do that a lot for some reason,” recalls the playwright and television writer, who most recently served as creator, executive producer, and showrunner of the critically acclaimed Starz series Vida. Even after she outgrew the table, Saracho never tired of telling stories. “I loved performing them and sharing that energy with an audience—that magical alchemy when the story ‘lands’ and the listener is emotionally affected, and they either react with laughter or tears,” she says. Vida featured an all-Latine writing and directorial staff, including Saracho, who made her directorial debut on the series. She’s now developing projects under an overall deal with Universal Content Productions, as well as helping other Latine creators tell stories of their own. She launched the Ojalá Ignition Lab, an incubator program focused on empowering and amplifying intersectional Latine voices, and founded the Untitled Latinx Project as well as its offshoot, Dear Hollywood, which aims to increase Latine representation in television through content created by Latine writers. Through these projects, Saracho says, “I want to create a beautiful slate of meaningful works, in television and film, that speaks to ‘our’ experience in complicated and unexpected ways. In a way that says we exist and we’ve always been here…we’ve always contributed to the narrative of this country.” The most rewarding aspect of Saracho’s work? “Definitely when I’ve been able to open that big, heavy industry grate, to get someone through that was having trouble getting in.”
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