NYWIFT Blog

By Nadia Delisfort 

Welcome to NYWIFT, Kristina Libby!

Kristina Libby is a storyteller, writer, artist, and technology executive living in NYC. She is best known for founding The Floral Heart Project — a national COVID memorial initiative — for which she was named a Hero of 2022 and recognized as a leading public artist for social change.

Kristina’s work spans mediums and genres: her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Popular Mechanics, Elle, and Salon, among others. She co-created the award-winning television pilot Penny Starts a Cult and the indie comedy Books, which was recently filmed with Rick and Morty’s Spencer Grammer, Office Space’s Ajay Naidu, and director Micah Khan.

She’s also a novelist represented by Sterling Lord Literary, a former one-woman show performer, and an artist whose work has been exhibited at Spring/Break, the Arizona Historical Society Museum, and the Milwaukee Art Museum.

In our interview, Kristina discusses her unique journey across art, tech, and storytelling — and how she finds power in combining them all.

NYWIFT Member Kristina Libby

What brings you to NYWIFT?

I’ve written a number of television pilots which have done well on the award circuit. But, in 2024 after doing a table read of one of our pilots, Books (When unfairly cancelled author Wren Wild took over her late father’s book store two years ago, she thought it’d be easier than publishing. But, when she’s forced to admit the business is in trouble, she reluctantly starts to entertain new ideas. Together, with the help of her impassioned cast of employees, they fight to keep the store, and the love of reading, alive.), we were approached by an executive producer about taking that script and filming it into a pilot.

He was able to bring the funding which allowed us to work with Rick and Morty’s Spencer Grammer, Office Space’s Ajay Naidu and director Micah Khan. After that process, I knew I needed a bigger network to go from ideation to collaboration to selling the work. I was hooked. Hopefully NYWIFT can help on that journey!

Behind the scenes of Books

You’ve co-created multiple film and TV projects, including Penny Starts a Cult and Books. What excites you most about translating your storytelling into visual media, and how does your creative process differ from writing prose?

The biggest difference is that I tend to write prose alone and prefer to make film and television projects with a collaborator. Most of my work is with Tim Cahill and we have a pretty specific process. We spend a lot of time trying to figure out what we want to watch that isn’t there, beating those ideas around, and then coming up with characters who we would want to spend time with. Then we dive into the framing of the story and then finally the writing.

When I’m writing prose, I just sort of dive right in and find the story on the page. But, I think the writing process is reflective of the whole process. TV and film ARE collaborative mediums beyond the writing and collaborating early means that the ideas have already been batted around a lot, and are conditioned to being batted around. There’s more resilience in a way and through that perhaps more universality to the stories.

You’ve been published in outlets like The New Yorker and McSweeney’s, while also leading a successful career in tech. How has that intersection shaped your storytelling voice?

I’ve always loved stories; I have an undergrad in English Literature which helps but more than anything I grew up with storytellers. My dad is and my grandfathers were the type of men who liked to lean back, look at you, tell you a good yarn and twist you up with anticipation until they hit the punchline. I think from the time I was a kid, I not only respected that but I wanted to emulate them and be the sort of person that could really get a room full of people howling in response to a well-told tale.

At the same time, my mom used to play this game called “continuing stories” when we drove anywhere in the car and so sometimes we’d go on and on for hours. I loved the expansive possibility of a story that never ends. Everything else–my career success–came out of the understanding that story is everything, great stories can keep going, and people love a good story.

Behind the scenes of Books

Your Floral Heart Project touched many people during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. What sparked it, and what do you hope its legacy will be?

I have a master’s degree in international security and I knew–fiercely knew–that what we were going through during the COVID-19 pandemic was a deep societal trauma. We were being let down by the government and our community. That sort of rift doesn’t go away; the Floral Heart Project was a way to respond to the rift and create community, create moments to grieve the trauma and drive understanding that we were in this together.

I felt if we didn’t grieve, we wouldn’t heal. I know it worked with some of us, but I still wish our country had done more to grieve, admit our losses and reflect on the hurt and harm in our past. But, I guess that means there is fodder for more public art.

Books BTS – Kristina Libby, TIm Cahill, Patrick Regan, – Credit: Zach Durocher

You wear many hats: fiction writer, artist, executive. How do you balance such a multifaceted career?

I believe in integrating them. I’m a person with a lot of interests, curiosities and hobbies. I am driven by a need to explore them and believe that exploring them makes me smarter, more talented and more capable in ALL facets of my life. There’s even research that supports the fact that the most innovative people are those with dual professional and creative careers. I know that’s true. The more I stretch creatively and diversify my career options, the more I improve at all my career foci.

But, it’s a lonely road to balance and hard to manage on your own. That’s why I’ve launched a community specifically for people like me: mid- and executive-level career professionals who have a second career in the creative arts. It’s called the Cohort, you can find out more here:  https://www.kristinalibby.com/the-cohort.

If you could collaborate with any filmmaker, past or present, who would it be and why?

Guy Ritchie!

Connect with Kristina Libby at www.kristinalibby.com and follow her on Instagram at @KristinaMLibby.

(All images courtesy of Kristina Libby)