BOOKS

SHORT FILM SCREENWRITING: A CRAFT GUIDE AND ANTHOLOGY

10 essays on screenwriting with 21 brilliant short scripts — from Sundance, SXSW, Cannes, TIFF and beyond — published for the first time. Check out the site.

“Because Bunn is so damn insightful, and so damn generous with his wisdom, his engaged and engaging book ends up speaking to lovers and crafts of films at all lengths. In short: this is one of the best books on screenwriting, period.”

Howard Rodman, screenwriter, USC professor

THE BRINK: STORIES

“THE BRINK is everything you’d want in a collection: funny, inventive, somehow both expansive and wistful. Austin Bunn is a young writer to reckon with.” — Jess Walter

Audie Winner 2017, Best Audio Book (Fiction Collection category)

BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR, Electric Literature

Lambda Literary Award Finalist

Brimming with life and unforgettable voices, the stories in Austin Bunn’s dazzling collection explore the existential question: what happens at “the end” and what lies beyond it? In the wry but affecting “How to Win an Unwinnable War,” a summer class on nuclear war for gifted teenagers turns a struggling family upside down. A young couple’s idyllic beach honeymoon is interrupted by terrorism in the lush, haunting “Getting There and Away.” When an immersive videogame begins turning off in the heartbreaking “Griefer,” an obsessive player falls in love with a mysterious player in the final hours of a world.

Told in a stunning range of voices, styles, and settings—from inside the Hale-Bopp cult to the deck of a conquistador’s galleon adrift at the end of the ocean—the stories in Bunn’s collection capture the transformations and discoveries at the edge of irrevocable change. Each tale presents a distinct world, told with deep emotion, energizing language, and characters with whom we have more in common that we realize.

A KILLER LIFE: HOW AN INDEPENDENT PRODUCER SURVIVES DEALS AND DISASTERS IN HOLLYWOOD AND BEYOND

Co-author with Christine Vachon

#88 on The Hollywood Reporter’s “Greatest 100 Film Books Of All Time”