Maya Simone is an award-winning director, writer, and actress based in Greensboro, North Carolina. She has directed over six film projects. In 2025, Maya was awarded the Silberman Family Emerging Filmmaker Scholarship from Uptilt Film Fest. In 2024, “Mouseshrooms,” a film Maya co-wrote, won Best Film and Runner Up: Writing at the 2024 Film48 Greensboro Competition.

She is a 2023 Gotham Film and Media Career Development Program participant (where she received the Sidney Poitier Scholarship), an HBCU 2020 x Martian Blueberry Writer’s Fellowship candidate, and is currently a Pubantz Artist in Residence artist where she is creating her romantic comedy “Rosa’s Dilemma.”

In her films, Maya creates the kind of stories her younger self longed to see growing up, while exploring sub-genres such as romantic comedies and surrealism in the process.