April Dobbins is a photographer, writer, and filmmaker. She was one of four filmmakers selected to screen her work at Sundance's 2016 Documentary Film Rough Cuts Lab in Miami, and she is also a recipient of the Sundance Institute Knight Fellowship, Firelight Media Documentary Lab Fellowship, Ellie Creators Award, Fork Film Fund grant, Southern Documentary Fund grant, Sundance Documentary Fund award, and the ITVS Diversity Development Fund. Her films have screened at festivals across the U.S.
Her feature documentary film project, Alabamaland, is an ongoing exploration of black family farms in the rural South.
She has published in Miami New Times, Sugarcane Magazine, Calyx Journal, Cimarron Review, Cura, Marr’s Field Journal, Philadelphia City Paper, Redivider, Sojourner: The Women’s Forum, Thema, and Transition magazine—a publication of the Hutchins Institute at Harvard University—to name a few. She was invited to attend Little Brown Mushroom’s inaugural Camp for Socially Awkward Storytellers at Alec Soth’s studio in St. Paul, Minnesota.
An alumna of the prestigious Rittenhouse Writers Group, she was invited to give TED talks on her work as a photographer and filmmaker for TEDxGrinnell in 2015 and TEDxUMiami in 2017.
She holds masters degrees in motion pictures and international relations. She is currently pursuing a graduate degree in arts in education at Harvard University.
For each of her successes, there have been dozens of failures and rejections.
