Like her characters, screenwriter Nic Cohen defies simple definition. Her love of dance and dual degrees in Forest Science and English led to an eclectic career that includes lobbying Capitol Hill for global warming policy, teaching ballet to toddlers, editing a tree farming magazine, and performing internationally in a salsa hip-hop group. Nic’s wildy-varied life experiences– from visiting detainees in Guantanamo Bay for human rights work to teaching NIH neuroscientists how to ballroom dance– inform her unique perspective on gender, access, and disrupting power.

A mother of three who writes erotic thrillers and dark psychological suspense, Nic challenges the boundaries of who women are allowed to be and centralizes real, relatable women fighting for autonomy in her work. She writes across genres, but particularly shines in suspense in all its forms– from contained psychological thrillers to the tingly anticipation of modern romance.

Nic’s first screenplay, sci-fi feature ARTEMIS ONE, was selected for Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman’s The Writers Lab in 2022 and placed in the top 15% of the Academy Nicholl Fellowship contest. Her psychological thriller, ALWAYS WE BEGIN AGAIN, was an Austin Film Festival Enderby Finalist and CineStory Finalist in 2022, and a Quarterfinalist in the Academy Nicholl Fellowship contest in 2023. Her World War II romance short story “Be Yours to Hold” was described as “the HOTTEST out of thousands of scripts” (emphasis reader’s) as a Screencraft Cinematic Short Story Semifinalist in 2019.

Nic is a native Texan who lives outside Washington, D.C. because she “married a yankee from Philadelphia and never moved home,” according to her Cajun mother. She’s a LGTBQ+-proud mom to three hilarious, neurodiverse adolescents, and they share a home with a shy Siberian kitten (Willa CatHer) and a bold pygmy hedgehog (The General Archibald Ludwig von Spikewell, or “The General” for short).