JACK BENNETT (he/him)

Jack Bennett moved from DIY features to impressive work in a variety of genres, most notably in music, comedy and horror. His recent directing credits include the concert films MR. BUNGLE: THE NIGHT THEY CAME HOME and ANTHRAX XL, the feature-length NEVER SURRENDER: A GALAXY QUEST DOCUMENTARY, music videos for Brian Posehn's comedy/metal record GRANDPA METAL and a documentary tribute to the life and legend of music icon Meat Loaf. Rolling Stone called his music video for the 2016 Anthrax song BLOOD EAGLE WINGS "Chilling and epic," and he has produced and conducted interviews with such film luminaries as Keanu Reeves, Sigourney Weaver, Christopher Lloyd and John Carpenter. He most recently produced and directed A GOOD SCREAM, which premiered at the historic Chinese Theater in October 2023 in the annual programming for Screamfest, a staple of Los Angeles genre film festivals.

MEGAN BURR (she/they)

Megan Burr grew up homeschooled in the buckle of the Bible Belt, so it’s a minor miracle she’s not a serial killer (yet!). But because of that upbringing, Megan developed both a strong belief in people’s inherent goodness and a crushing fear of her own mortality. Combine those seemingly disparate ideas, and what results is a love of stories where people who are doing their damn best go up against anxiety-inducing—and frequently morbid—circumstances. In her spare time, Megan enjoys baking gluten-free treats (to appease her Celiac), crocheting (to hasten arthritis), and trivia, the last of which gave her the chance to get absolutely destroyed on Jeopardy (which was a character-building experience).

EAMONN COGAN (he/him)

Eamonn Cogan was born in Chicago, Illinois. After seeing Jurassic Park 26 times in the theater at the age of five, he knew he had to make movies. A graduate of Drake University's School of Journalism & Mass Communication, where he was a Linebacker on their Division 1-AA Football team. His senior thesis project, Beyond the Blue Line went on to win 2 Silver Communicators, a Bronze Telly, and the Upper Midwest Regional Student Award of Excellence (NATAS), while his second short film, The Rules of Luck, was invited to screen as part of the HollyShorts Screening Series. His other film, Redemption, was an Official Selection of the Ft. Myers Beach Film Festival. Eamonn's screenplays have done well in competition, including a Finalist, two Semi-finalists, and six Second Rounders at the Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition, a Semi-Finalist in the Page Awards, a Semi-Finalist and a Quarter-Finalist in the Emerging Screenwriters Genre Screenplay Competition, and a Semi-Finalist in the ISA Horror & Thriller Genre-Busting Screenplay competition.

BRIAN FIRENZI (he/him)

The co-creator of 5SecondFilms and RocketJump’s Streamy Award-winning ‘Video Game High School, California native (and former Pixar lecturer) Brian Firenzi has written skits for the likes of Keegan Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Jimmy Kimmel, Patton Oswalt and Weird Al, among others, and served as co-writer on Dude Bro Party Massacre III which won the Audiences Darling Award at Germany's HARD:LINE Film Festival. Currently in post on the shorts TyTank and Under the Haunted Moon, his last completed film, Fudgie Freddie, directed by frequent collaborator Jon Salmon, was nominated for Best Midnight Short and Best Actor at FilmQuest 2023, and is a proof of concept for their millennial body horror comedy feature Ice Cream Man. Currently a resident of London, his dream is to write horror and comedy features, while working on the strangest shows TV has to offer, on either side of the Atlantic.

ANDY FROEMKE (he/him)

A proud member of the Writer’s Guild of America based in Minnesota, Andy began his storytelling career behind the camera, following Robert Redford around the rivers of Montana for Shadowcasting: The Making of A River Runs Through It, garnering a Regional Emmy nomination, and a Gold Hugo win at the Chicago Film Festival. In 2016 he won the IFP North/Knight Foundation Screenwriting Residency with his historical biopic about Native American outlaw Henry Berry Lowrie, which was followed up by Steal Away, the story of Robert Smalls, a slave who overcame incredible obstacles to free himself and his family during the Civil War. The latter was optioned by Amazon Studios, with Academy Award-winner Charles Burnett attached to direct. In 2019, Andy got behind the camera writing and directing the short Song Without Words, an award winner at the LA Shorts Int’l Film Festival. His last project was an adaptation of memoir ‘Prison Baby’, which was optioned by Rickshaw Films. Currently working with a producer on an historical epic, when he’s not writing, he mentors fellow scribes in the Creative Writing MFA program at Augsburg University.

DAVID HEBRERO (he/him)

At the ripe age of 19, Madrid native David Hebrero’s 2015 directorial debut, Color Blues, was nominated at the LA Shorts Awards for both Best Screenplay and Best Short Film. In 2019, its follow-up Paralelos became an Official Selection at the prestigious Sitges Film Festival, while that same year his first feature, Dulcinea, received theatrical distribution. In 2020, he made Everyone Will Burn, which also went on to screen at Sitges before winning Best Film at Brazil’s Fantaspoa International Fantastic Film Festival and the Critics’ Choice Award at ScreamFest before seeing a stateside theatrical release in 2023, courtesy of Drafthouse Films. He is currently in pre-production on the horror/fantasy adventure film House of Monsters, which is scheduled to shoot in the second half of 2024 in his native country. Under his Nostalgia Films banner, which he co-founded with the Oakland-born Deja Gordon, he is excited to share his voice and vision with a wider audience as he steadily shifts his focus to more English language projects.

MELLINDA HENSLEY (she/her)

An Emmy-nominated and Writers Guild Award-winning writer who told people at her high school reunion that she switched babies for a living, Mellinda Hensley started her work in television as an assistant on daytime’s #1 show, ‘The Young and The Restless’, where she was later promoted to Associate Head Writer, eventually helping to craft more than 130 episodes of television. Additionally a director and producer, her two comedy shorts Apeulogy and Across The Room have screened at more than 60 festivals worldwide, with the former nominated five times, and the latter winning twenty five awards. In case of emergency, she can be used as a flotation device.

CK KIMBALL (they/them)

CK’s past partnerships include collaborations with Legendary Pictures, The Nerdist, High Times, and Fangoria, among others. A seasoned comedy performer at both UCB and The Pack, they are also a current student at the world-famous Santino Brothers Wrestling Academy, and have appeared in music videos for GWAR and Anthrax. Alongside Jack Bennett (Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary), they also co-produced Brian Posehn's ‘New Music Sucks' music video. Their debut short Everyone Hates Clowns was featured at the Etheria Film Night, while a recent pilot script, ‘The Very Gay Bookstore’, was cited by several competitions. To stay grounded, they regularly produce live drag and music events with Alamo Drafthouse, and write for the one million subscriber YouTube channel CZS WORLD. A lifelong fan of horror and animated comedy, they would like to write a Rob Zombie treatment with a mostly female cast, and episodes of American Dad, please. Jacob said he’d “try to help with that”, so here we are.

SPENCER ROLLINS (he/him)

Spencer Rollins is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist who brings a fresh creative perspective and a deft hand when it comes to narrative, be it as a cinematographer on Coming To (Fearless Filmmaker Award at Slamdance), or in his 2023 directorial debut short, Pretty Good. As an editor he has worked alongside Emmy-winner Ali LeRoi (The Obituary of Tunde Johnson), multiple SXSW-nominee Daryl Wein (White Rabbit, Sundance Film Festival), and most recently, Hala Matar’s Electra, starring Academy Award-nominee Maria Bakalova. Further collaborations include projects with Shia LeBeouf, Thomas Lennon, Tim Robbins, and Randy Jackson, for whom he served as Head of Development on a music competition reality show in 2020. He is currently on tour with and just finished an album as guitarist for the Billboard-charting rock band, She Wants Revenge.

CASSANDRA ROSE (she/her)

Originally from Rockford, IL (go Peaches!), Cassandra is a playwright, screenwriter, narrative designer, and audio drama writer with a BA in Playwriting from Columbia College Chicago. Following a residency with Chicago Dramatists' Tutterow Fellowship, she then moved to LA and obtained certificates in Writing for Television and Producing at UCLA’s Professional Program. As a narrative designer and audio drama writer, she shipped multiple titles for the romance video game Chapters, and multiple episodes for Wondery, Starlight Radio Dreams, and The Whiskey Radio Hour, respectively. In 2022, she won the Scripted Digital Series award at the Austin Film Festival for ‘Walk Into A Bar’. Since then, she has been commissioned to adapt “On the Train” into script form by the author’s family, and was hired by Antijinx Productions and FutureHome to write the short film Lost Cosmonaut for future feature development. No matter the format or genre, she writes about people making genuine connections in surprising ways.

TAYLOR STEELE (she/her)

Taylor Steele is a queer, Black, multi-disciplinary artist from New York whose poetry earned her a Pushcart nomination in 2016, with further works being featured by Huffington Post, Brooklyn Poets, and Button Poetry, eventually culminating with the chapbook “Drowning in Light'', published by Platypus Press in 2022, meanwhile her essays have been published on AFROPUNK, Samuel French, and The Body is Not an Apology, among others. An Honorable Mention for the National Queer Theater’s New Visions Fellowship, in 2019 she directed a workshop performance of her play “Girls Act Out” while in residency at The Center at West Park, and in 2021 was script supervisor on the multimedia project “Is it love, or is it fantasy?” directed by Jared Mezzocchi, at National Sawdust. Her comedy pilots ‘Psych-Ish’ and ‘35 Bleak St.’ have placed in several writing competitions, including the Big Apple Film Festival Screenplay Competition and the Stage 32 TV Comedy Screenwriting Contest, respectively. A triple-Taurus, Taylor stubbornly believes in the power of art to change, shape, and heal.

SCOTT VASEY (he/him)

Scott Vasey was born in Seattle, graduated from Georgia Tech, and currently lives in Tampa, FL with his family. He’s developed a rich horror and thriller feature portfolio inspired by the countless characters he’s encountered working as a construction worker, math teacher, project manager, and as an actuary. An active contributor in the wider Tampa film scene, his horror short Power Up is currently available via HorrOrigins on YouTube, with his last two directing efforts, Cookies By the Fire and Tech Savvy both having screened at Screamfest. Currently, his Christmas horror feature, The Carolers (co-written by Jason Gruich) has director Brent Cote attached, while Barbecue Bill, Cabin 4, and Nikki are under shopping agreements with Citizen Skull.