Chelsea Steiner is a New Orleans native, who has spent the last ten years working and writing in Los Angeles. She studied Communication and Creative Writing at Stanford University, and upon graduation she joined International Creative Management as a member of their agent trainee program.
After deciding that the agency route wasn’t for her, Chelsea teamed up with her older sister Carley, and they began a fruitful writing partnership. In 2008, they sold their first script, family comedy Tough Cookies, to Walden Media and joined the WGA. Since then, they have written for the Disney Channel, Lifetime, NBC Universal, Nick Jr., Broken Road, Original Films, and Global Film Group. Together, they were honorees of the WGAW Feature Writers Access Project in 2015.
Chelsea is a contributing writer and columnist for queer websites Autostraddle and AfterEllen, where she covers queer pop culture and social news. Chelsea has appeared as a panelist at San Diego Comic Con, as well as Stan Lee’s Comikaze, where she discusses the intersections of queer and geek culture. In March, she will be appearing as a featured speaker at ClexaCon, the first media and entertainment convention for LGBTQ women. She is an active member of the LGBT Writers Guild committee and the Committee of Women Writers at the WGAW. Chelsea is a former roller derby girl and a black belt in judo, so she is not to be trifled with.
They say that you should write what you know, and this is what I know: as soon as I began working at the Pleasure Chest in West Hollywood, I knew that there was a story here. In 2015, I took a job as the social media manager and national copywriter for the Pleasure Chest, despite having zero experience in social media, copywriting, or the sex industry. It’s become at turns a wildly inspiring, silly, and soulful place to work. The staff is almost exclusively queer folks of color, with a range of writers, actors, and performance artists on the payroll. It is, without a doubt, the most diverse, liberal, and compassionate working environment I’ve ever experienced.
After working as a screenwriter for nearly ten years, this is my first foray into directing. This production was made up of mostly women, LGBTQ folks, and people of color in front of and behind the camera.
LGBTQ+ Toronto Film Festival 