Harriet Anita Dickey was born in Chicago several years ago and attended St. George and St. Sabina Catholic schools on the South side.  Right before she was scheduled to go to Queen of Peace High School in the Burbank suburb, her parents got the bright idea to return to their home state of Mississippi.  Thankfully, she was familiar with the South as she had already spent many hot mosquito-ridden summers there.

​After graduating from Grenada High School, she attended Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she majored in broadcast journalism with the intent of becoming a news reporter.  At the last minute, she changed her mind and decided she wanted to write TV shows instead.

​For the next five years, she churned out script after script and, following advice she found in a book by J. Michael Straczynski, she sent them to Hollywood studios in rapid succession.  Before she knew it, executives at ABC and Columbia Pictures responded and Aaron Spelling offered to pay for her to move to Los Angeles.  It couldn't have happened at a better time because she'd just found out that her job as a paste-up artist for Donnelley Information Publishing was about to be dissolved as the company made plans to relocate to Texas.  

​For about one year, things couldn't have been better.  She signed with Creative Artists Agency and met the power brokers at almost every major studio.  But then the Writer's strike hit and everything came to a halt.  When the strike was over, all the new writers were left in the dust as friends and family (nepotism is alive and well in Tinsel Town) scrambled to put their cronies back to work.  Also, the industry was not as diverse then as it is today.

​Harriet's produced credits include an ABC Afterschool Special titled Daddy's Girl, an episode of Sirens, and a tenure as staff writer on Goode Behavior, Sherman Hemsley's last TV show.  She now writes children's books and teaches middle school language arts.