KALA MANDRAKE  is a writer, photographer and filmmaker, born and raised in New York. Starting her career as a teenager, she photographed bands and the locals on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She went to school at Hunter College on the Upper East Side to study film/media and music, and began working in television (BBC, HBO, Cinemax, Nickelodeon) as a writer/producer and video editor. She began using these skills to film and edit some of the talented individuals she had photographed over the years, making music videos and behind-the-scenes films. She published a book of her photographs, in the same year that she published her first novella, and shortly after, directed a short film adaptation of her book. She started a production house, and has gone on to edit for a variety of feature filmmakers and documentarians. During this time, she opened an independent book publishing house, and published two more books of her own. Kala is currently finishing her feature documentary film about her famed grandfather, Mandrake the Magician, to be released in 2019.