McKenzie is a writer, filmmaker, actor, and educator based in Chicago. She is the screenwriter, producer, and lead actor of Olympia, which premiered at the 2018 LA Film Festival and won the Audience Award at the 2019 Bentonville Film Festival. As an actor, she has worked onstage with Goodman and Steppenwolf Theatres, The Second City, Woolly Mammoth, The Studio Theatre, and others, as well as on screen including FOX’s Empire, CBS’ The Red Line, and the upcoming FOX pilot The Big Leap. Her poetry has been nominated for multiple awards including a Pushcart Prize, and she is part of Growing Concerns Poetry Collective whose releases include two albums – BIG DARK BRIGHT FUTURES (2020) and WE HERE: Thank You For Noticing (2017), and the poetry collection Five Fifths (Candor Arts, 2018). She is a 2015 Leonore Annenberg Artist Fellow and a 2020 See It Be It Filmmaker Fellow with the Bentonville Film Festival. mckenziechinn.com
