Daria Sommers

Daria Sommers is a writer and filmmaker whose work includes both fiction and non-fiction. Her novel Sawadika American Girl will be released from Vine Leaves Press May 5, 2026. Her essays, op-eds and reviews have been widely published including in the Ginosko Literary Journal, Woman Around Town, Art New England and The New York Times. Daria is currently the Managing Editor of VBC Magazine.

Her feature-length documentary Lioness, about women soldiers who served in the Iraq War won Duke University’s coveted Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award at the Full Frame Film Festival. Other films include the half-hour 35 mm drama Ready to Burn, winner of Panavision’s New Director Award; Three Trembling Cities, a web series on immigrants in New York City, winner of Best Drama at UK WebFest and Philly TV Fest; and Eastern Spirit, a profile of Chinese American artist Diana Kan.

Daria's work has garnered support from the NEH, the NEA, the Sundance Documentary Fund, the Fledgling Fund, Chicken and Egg Pictures, NYSCA and the John Whitney Payson Fund among many others. She has been an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Arts and Mass MoCA, served on the Metropolitan Museum's Program for Art on Film and been a juror for the UN's One In A Billion Film Series.

Her work has screened at festivals around the world including Tribeca, the London Human Rights Watch Film Festival and the Valencia Film Festival, and been broadcast internationally on PBS, BBC, CBC, and in France and Australia.

Daria is a graduate of Oberlin College.