Yvette Lee Bowser

Yvette Denise Lee Bowser (born 1965) is an American television writer and producer. She wrote and produced the TV shows Living Single and Half & Half, and early in her career, worked on The Cosby Show spin-off A Different World. With Living Single, she became the first African-American woman to develop her own primetime series. Career Bowser started on A Different World in 1987 as one of a number of apprentices, rising in prominence in the production company over the years and eventually becoming producer by the 1991–92 season. She left the show to take a position with Hangin' with Mr. Cooper. Bowser created her own company, Sister Lee Productions, which produced or co-produced her later shows, Living Single and Half & Half. She has said in an interview that she draws many of her characters and plots from her own and her friends' personal experiences. She has said, "I just basically rip pages out of my diary to tell stories on TV." In the case of Half & Half, for example, the writer based the characters Mona and Dee-Dee on herself and an older half-sister, and plot ideas came from her experience as the youngest child in a blended family. Through Sister Lee Productions, Bowser served as showrunner for the critically acclaimed Netflix series Dear White People, adapted with Justin Simien from his film of the same name. In 2020, she became the showrunner on the Starz original series Run the World, created by Leigh Davenport.