Kryssa Schemmerling received her M.F.A. from Columbia University’s film program where she co-wrote, co-directed and co-produced a Student Academy Award-winning short film, Gold Mountain.

She has since co-written and co-directed two other narrative shorts. The First Seven Years, starring Israel Horovitz and Carol Kane, screened nationally on PBS, while her latest award-winning short, The West Begins at Fifth Avenue, screened at festivals here and abroad. She also directed and produced a feature-length documentary, Our Hawaii, with funding from the New York State Council on the Arts.

In 2016 her first book, Iris In, a collection of poems about films and cinema history, was published by Broadstone Books. Her work has been published widely in literary journals.

She teaches screenwriting at Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema, Brooklyn College, The City University of New York. A California native, she now lives in Brooklyn.