Biography of John Leary

John Leary's love for film came about when he was a teenager and saw Citizen Kane and Night Of The Living Dead in the same week. He was instantly drawn to the power of cinema in films that subverted genre and took them into unexpected places. John attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan where he regularly cut film school...to go to the movies. Not satisfied with the slate of films he saw in his theory and history classes, he made the pilgrimage down to Cinema Village where he received a secondary education digesting three movies a week in theaters and many more on VHS.

He completed his four years at SVA with a degree in Cinema Studies. He applied all of the tools of his film education and quickly secured a job working at...Video Shack. At night he continued to write screenplays and submit reviews to the local Long Island paper Good Times and bubble gum card copy for Topps Inc.

Leary is now the award winning author of thriller, horror and fantasy screenplays, and animation. He’s also dabbled in black comedy and sci-fi.

His scripts have won the Los Angeles Script and Film Festival Best Drama Award, Jacksonville Film Festival Screenwriting Competition (winning 2nd and 3rd prizes), First place winner in the Aliens to Zombies Screenplay Contest, finaled in the Scriptoid Writer's Challenge and the StoryPro International Screenwriting Competition, been nominated for the CLAW award (Philadelphia Terror Film Festival) and semi-finaled in the Final Draft and Slamdance Screenplay competitions.

He’s contributed scripts to the anthology television series in development LAST NIGHT ON EARTH, and to the Saturday morning Fox series EEK! THE CAT. His short script, QUICK SHOP, was directed by Martin Binder in 2011.

He is half of the horror/thriller/fantasy award-winning writing team of John Leary & Alison McMahan.