Austin Bunn

Overview

I'm a writer and filmmaker whose work has been screened at Sundance, published in the New York Times, played at many international film festivals and nominated for the Academy Award, released on Audible and WBEZ, and included in Best American fiction and essay anthologies. I'm the author of three books: the short story collection The Brink, published by Harper Perennial and selected as a Lamdba Lit finalist and Electric Literature "Best Short Story Collection of 2015"; Short Film Screenwriting: A Craft Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2025); and A Killer Life: How an Independent Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond (Simon and Schuster), written with the esteemed producer Christine Vachon and #88 on The Hollywood Reporter’s "100 Greatest Film Books of All Time".

As a filmmaker, I co-wrote the script for Kill Your Darlings (Sony Pictures Classics), starring Daniel Radcliffe and Dane DeHaan, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and won the International Days Prize at the Venice Film Festival. I've written feature screenplays and television pilots for Fox 2000, Lionsgate, Participant Media, Tomorrow Studios and served as a mentor at the Screenwriters' Colony (Nantucket) and Outfest Screenwriting Lab. I've written and directed several award-winning short films, including "Lavender Hill," "In the Hollow," "Ascent," "Ghosts", and the Academy Award-nominated "Campfire," which have screened nationally and internationally at Frameline (SF), PBS Online Film Festival, OutFest (LA), InsideOut (Toronto), Cleveland Intl (OH), Brooklyn Film Festival (NY), Provincetown International Film Festival (MA), Sidewalk Film Festival (AL), and elsewhere. "Farm Grrrl Folk Punk," a collaboratively produced short doc made with Cornell students, debuted at the Sound Unseen Film Festival (Minneapolis MN and Austin TX). 

I worked for nearly a decade as a journalist, and my fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Zoetrope, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Science and Nature Writing, and elsewhere. My Audible Original DENALI (2025) reached #2 on the Audible “Top Audiobook” charts. My monologue, "Basement Story," won the Missouri Review Audio Essay Prize and has been broadcast on WBEZ, Third Coast, Australian Radio, and Michigan Public Radio. I won a NYSCA Fellowship in Screenwriting, been a fellow at Yaddo and a Michener-Copernicus fellow in fiction. In 2017, I won the Carpenter Memorial Advising Award for my work helping students connect with professionals in film, television, theatre and media. From 2020-2025, I served as the director of the Milstein Program in Technology and Humanity.