Jamie Broadnax | |
---|---|
Born | Portsmouth, Virginia, U.S. | April 24, 1980
Occupation | Film critic, writer |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Norfolk State University (BA) Regent University (MA)[1] |
Jamie Broadnax (born 24 April 1980) is an American film critic, podcaster and writer, known for founding[2] and being editor-in-chief and CEO of the Black Girl Nerds community.[3]
Broadnax, who has a master's degree in Film and Marketing,[4] and started her career in film, by working on several film shoots in various positions. Broadnax became a film critic,[5] is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association,[6] and as a freelance writer about films has written for numerous publications, including HuffPost,[7] the New York Post,[8] Variety,[9] and Vulture.com.[10]
Broadnax has hosted panel discussions, including the panel at the A Wrinkle in Time premiere and the Sorry to Bother You panel at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.[11] She has also co-hosted the "Misty Knight's Uninformed Afro" podcast about black superheroines,[12] and in April 2017, she co-launched the #NoConfederate hashtag campaign in response to HBO's plan to produce a series - Confederate - with the premise "What if the Confederacy never lost?".[13][14] In an October 2015 guest appearance on the Melissa Harris-Perry TV program, Broadnax talked about diversity in comics and at New York Comic Con.[15]
In 2014, Broadnax was accredited by MSNBC's The Grio 100.[16] She has been described as "one of the biggest up-and-coming names in black-nerd pop culture" (by The Root's Jason Johnson[3]) and as "one of the most important makers of 2016" (by Paste's Shannon M. Houston[4]).
Mid 2018, after co-founding "Universal FanCon"[17] and running a successful Kickstarter campaign for the convention,[18] Broadnax was caught up in the controversy surrounding the convention being cancelled[19] and she then released a public statement[20] and stepped back temporarily from a leadership role to regroup.
Black Girl Nerds initially started as a Blogspot journal,[21] where Broadnax wrote about various topics, including her own online dating experiences.[22] In 2013, Black Weblog Awards awarded Black Girl Nerds "Best Podcast".[23] The community gradually became more mainstream, in particular after a shout-out by Shonda Rhimes in the September 2014 issue of Marie Claire.[11] In October 2015, HuffPost named Black Girl Nerds one of the leading Black Podcasts.[24] Late 2017, its website had over 200,000 monthly visitors.[21]