Biography
NAHSHON DION (b. April 1, 1978) is an African American Bronx-based multi-talented, award-winning nonfiction writer, teaching artist, writing mentor, video editor, emerging filmmaker, producer, grant writer, grants panelist, community organizer, fundraiser, disability advocate, and arts patron from San Gabriel mountain foothills in Altadena, CA. But most of all, she is a survivor!
Since the 1850s, she's had roots in the deep south of East Texas and Opelousas, Louisiana. Nahshon's family has endured 100 years of documented lethal gun violence, starting with her Great Grandmother, Zephyr Smith Scott (1900-1923). Growing up in a working-class family in the backyard of Hollywood, she's been an entertainment industry professional for 30 years in various roles behind the scenes and in front of the lens as a SAG-AFTRA actor. Her superior memory, attention to detail, discernment, and strategic planning has been the key to her success and longevity, along with the guaranteed monthly income she has received since 2004.
As a pre-teen, she was relied on for counting, reading, and writing by her illiterate grandfather, blind grandmother, and dyslexic mother. She witnessed the power of a SONY camcorder change Los Angeles and the nation. On March 3, 1991, Nahshon watched in disbelief as Los Angeles Police officers on the local news brutalized her family friend, motorist Rodney King. With the glare of the media on the family, the chaotic aftermath played out for several months on Nahshon’s front lawn, driveway, and apartment, where Rodney and his wife lived before Nahshon’s family moved in. The horrific scene was one of the most savage in modern-day history. It was the biggest case of civil unrest in the city’s history and piqued Nahshon's interest in film, technology, and human rights creating an aesthetic blueprint for her life.
A year later, fourteen miles south, while Korea town was being looted and torched, her grandmother Betty Fuentes yelled “BURN” as flames surrounded her Harvard Heights neighborhood. After the Los Angeles riots in 1992, she became a news junkie, capitalized on the situation, and wrote a five-page essay on community improvement and conflict resolution. She won a Discovery Card excellence award and $500. Those funds flew her family to New York, which left Nahshon wanting to live in the Big Apple and be a published writer.
Inspiration appeared in Nahshon’s life at age thirteen when her John Marshall junior high school drama class took field trips to visit live television show tapings of the sitcom Family Matters. After those experiences, Nahshon knew that one day they would merge their love of writing and film together. In 1994, she was repped by Beverly Hecht talent agency and cast in her first TV commercial for Chuck E. Cheese.
In 1996, while attending John Muir High, she met beloved rapper and actor Tupac Shakur at her senior prom. She told Tupac she was Brenda's baby. Tupac referred her to his business partner Tracy D. Robinson, the founder and president of Look Hear Sound & Vision Productions. After graduation, she interned at Look Hear and assisted directors Tracy and Gobi M. Rahimi. That Fall, while attending California State University, Los Angeles, she worked as an extra on the TV shows Moesha and The Steve Harvey Show.
Nahshon was a production assistant for Master P’s film Da Last Don and The Keenan Ivory Wayans Show. At age nineteen, she assisted prolific British Executive Producers Charlie A. Parsons and Michael Davies at Buena Vista TV (Walt Disney). Nahshon was the production coordinator for Russell Simmons' One World Music Beat and Shauna R. Garr's documentary film 1 More Hit.
Nahshon’s literature and work speak to identity, discrimination, and violence against Black and Brown youth. She's published in several anthologies and literary journals. She has received dozens of grants, fellowships, top artist residencies, honors, and awards from across the nation that supported developing her forthcoming untitled memoir. Nahshon has received generous support and funding for over three decades from dozens of esteemed artists, writers, entertainment and media professionals, organizations, and the United States Federal Government, which secured her spot as an entrepreneur. She pays it forward as an arts advocate and grant writer. For over a decade, Nahshon has voluntarily assisted dozens of artists, entrepreneurs, and crime victims nationally with obtaining tens of thousands of dollars in grants, funding, and crucial resources.
Nahshon's fierce reputation proceeds her. In 2020, she was interviewed by writer Sheldon Pearce for Changes: An Oral History of Tupac (Simon & Schuster). In 2021, Nahshon, Tracy Robinson, and Leila Steinberg, in collaboration with Aim4theHeart, hosted Tupac Shakur's 50th birthday celebration and a 25th-anniversary death tribute with a dozen artists is hosted on her YouTube channel, TRANSBRATIONS.
To continue making positive contributions and maximize her potential for sustained positive impact, she's developing a documentary film, Renewed Life, based on her life, survival, and artistic journey. The film is her triumphant rainbow blueprint to show marginalized youth the importance of self-respect and how to reach their full potential and shine with dignity when their rainbow is blurred. In 2022, Nahshon Dion was selected as a Bronx Documentary Center Film Fellow (finalist) and awarded an 18th Street Arts Center artist residency for her dedication to the arts and passionate creative excellence.
I wanted to reiterate that your story is so powerful and so important. I really look forward to the day we sit together in one of these theaters in New York and watch it. ― Zachary Kerschberg, BDC Films Program Manager, American documentary and narrative filmmaker.
Nahshon Dion's pronouns are He/She and they/them.
Since the 1850s, she's had roots in the deep south of East Texas and Opelousas, Louisiana. Nahshon's family has endured 100 years of documented lethal gun violence, starting with her Great Grandmother, Zephyr Smith Scott (1900-1923). Growing up in a working-class family in the backyard of Hollywood, she's been an entertainment industry professional for 30 years in various roles behind the scenes and in front of the lens as a SAG-AFTRA actor. Her superior memory, attention to detail, discernment, and strategic planning has been the key to her success and longevity, along with the guaranteed monthly income she has received since 2004.
As a pre-teen, she was relied on for counting, reading, and writing by her illiterate grandfather, blind grandmother, and dyslexic mother. She witnessed the power of a SONY camcorder change Los Angeles and the nation. On March 3, 1991, Nahshon watched in disbelief as Los Angeles Police officers on the local news brutalized her family friend, motorist Rodney King. With the glare of the media on the family, the chaotic aftermath played out for several months on Nahshon’s front lawn, driveway, and apartment, where Rodney and his wife lived before Nahshon’s family moved in. The horrific scene was one of the most savage in modern-day history. It was the biggest case of civil unrest in the city’s history and piqued Nahshon's interest in film, technology, and human rights creating an aesthetic blueprint for her life.
A year later, fourteen miles south, while Korea town was being looted and torched, her grandmother Betty Fuentes yelled “BURN” as flames surrounded her Harvard Heights neighborhood. After the Los Angeles riots in 1992, she became a news junkie, capitalized on the situation, and wrote a five-page essay on community improvement and conflict resolution. She won a Discovery Card excellence award and $500. Those funds flew her family to New York, which left Nahshon wanting to live in the Big Apple and be a published writer.
Inspiration appeared in Nahshon’s life at age thirteen when her John Marshall junior high school drama class took field trips to visit live television show tapings of the sitcom Family Matters. After those experiences, Nahshon knew that one day they would merge their love of writing and film together. In 1994, she was repped by Beverly Hecht talent agency and cast in her first TV commercial for Chuck E. Cheese.
In 1996, while attending John Muir High, she met beloved rapper and actor Tupac Shakur at her senior prom. She told Tupac she was Brenda's baby. Tupac referred her to his business partner Tracy D. Robinson, the founder and president of Look Hear Sound & Vision Productions. After graduation, she interned at Look Hear and assisted directors Tracy and Gobi M. Rahimi. That Fall, while attending California State University, Los Angeles, she worked as an extra on the TV shows Moesha and The Steve Harvey Show.
Nahshon was a production assistant for Master P’s film Da Last Don and The Keenan Ivory Wayans Show. At age nineteen, she assisted prolific British Executive Producers Charlie A. Parsons and Michael Davies at Buena Vista TV (Walt Disney). Nahshon was the production coordinator for Russell Simmons' One World Music Beat and Shauna R. Garr's documentary film 1 More Hit.
Nahshon’s literature and work speak to identity, discrimination, and violence against Black and Brown youth. She's published in several anthologies and literary journals. She has received dozens of grants, fellowships, top artist residencies, honors, and awards from across the nation that supported developing her forthcoming untitled memoir. Nahshon has received generous support and funding for over three decades from dozens of esteemed artists, writers, entertainment and media professionals, organizations, and the United States Federal Government, which secured her spot as an entrepreneur. She pays it forward as an arts advocate and grant writer. For over a decade, Nahshon has voluntarily assisted dozens of artists, entrepreneurs, and crime victims nationally with obtaining tens of thousands of dollars in grants, funding, and crucial resources.
Nahshon's fierce reputation proceeds her. In 2020, she was interviewed by writer Sheldon Pearce for Changes: An Oral History of Tupac (Simon & Schuster). In 2021, Nahshon, Tracy Robinson, and Leila Steinberg, in collaboration with Aim4theHeart, hosted Tupac Shakur's 50th birthday celebration and a 25th-anniversary death tribute with a dozen artists is hosted on her YouTube channel, TRANSBRATIONS.
To continue making positive contributions and maximize her potential for sustained positive impact, she's developing a documentary film, Renewed Life, based on her life, survival, and artistic journey. The film is her triumphant rainbow blueprint to show marginalized youth the importance of self-respect and how to reach their full potential and shine with dignity when their rainbow is blurred. In 2022, Nahshon Dion was selected as a Bronx Documentary Center Film Fellow (finalist) and awarded an 18th Street Arts Center artist residency for her dedication to the arts and passionate creative excellence.
I wanted to reiterate that your story is so powerful and so important. I really look forward to the day we sit together in one of these theaters in New York and watch it. ― Zachary Kerschberg, BDC Films Program Manager, American documentary and narrative filmmaker.
Nahshon Dion's pronouns are He/She and they/them.