Susan Austin left her simple upstate New York roots and set out for California in 1999. She graduated valedictorian of UCLA film school in 2002, where she was recognized for her short films Voodoo and Tighter, winning the Peter Stark Memorial Scholarship and the Gene Reynolds Award. She worked as a script reader for Silver Lion Films and Penny Marshall’s Parkway Productions before returning to UCLA for an MFA in Screenwriting in 2004. Susan is currently directing the documentary This American Death, which examines why a “good death” is hard to achieve, and is at work on two feature scripts, St. Dominic’s Preview and Window Kissing. She lives in New York City.