Biography

Justin Neal writes offbeat narratives that weave comedy with high-stakes drama, creating uplifting tales of personal transformation. Neal's works have placed him in dozens of screenwriting competitions, programs, and residencies across North America. His feature screenplay The Skins Game received development from Telefilm and the Indigenous Screen Office (ISO). His series, Boundary Bay - a project selected to the Indigenous Screen Summit at the 2022 Banff Media Festival - and feature, The Traveller, were both awarded grants from the ISO and Creative BC. His series Hole in the Donut received Creative BC's Rogers Indigenous Film Funding in 2023. A playwright and theatre producer of Vancouver, BC based Holy Crow Arts, the fledgling theatre company premiered his play So Damn Proud in 2021, and will premiere his latest play, Keepers of the Salish Sea, in late November 2024. From the late 1990s to the 2010s Neal juggled day jobs in marketing and editorial production in San Francisco & New York with amateur theatre at night. Resolving to focus full-time on storytelling, he relocated to his family's Squamish Nation territory, earning a Joint Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Theatre from the University of British Columbia in 2015. Neal is a 2022 alumnus of the Canadian Film Centre's Norman Jewison Film Program Writers' Lab.
- IMDb mini biography by: J. Neal