Semifinalist, 45 Forward Screenwriting Fellowship (2026)
BIO
AC Cole, an avid journaler who grew up in a photography family, worked weddings in wigs and dresses to hide androgynous queer underpinnings in order to infiltrate blue blood Boston weddings and get the job done. Then took photography on the road as a street kid/street photographer, starting her storytelling journey with ephemeral photo essays about America's unwanted/underrepresented populations. Continuing her journey of chameleoning to fit in anywhere and get the story, Cole's education went from a Harvard darkroom sneak-aboard to a winding undergrad road, landing in an MFA program created by the same chair who had taken her under his wing at Harvard 30 years earlier. Cole landed on screenwriting as the perfect combination of infiltration, written word, and photographed image, with grounded horror and thriller film and TV where protagonists continue to infiltrate where they shouldn't, solve the case, or deal with the depths of their own trauma as mirrored by some outward terror. All with some kernel of socially conscious message driving the conflict. Fun!