Nicole Conn has been a die-hard romantic and black and white film fan from the age of ten.
Her penchant for adult and dramatic story telling is evident in latest feature film, Elena Undone touted as “sexy and smart. A classic romance with a twist, veteran lesbian writer Nicole Conn’s (Claire of the Moon, little man) latest effort will be sure to sweep audiences off their feet.” She is currently penning the book version of Elena Undone due in spring 2011.
Conn’s previous venture, little man, is a documentary she wrote, directed and produced about her own premature son born 100 days early and only weighing one pound. The feature documentary went on to win 12 Best Documentary Awards, along with the prestigious Cedar Sinai’s Courageous Beginnings Award and Family Pride’s Family Tree Award. The film made three TOP TEN FILMS OF 2005 list and Showtime picked up the feature and ran an Emmy campaign on this hard-hitting story about Conn’s son’s premature birth and subsequent 5-month hospital stay in a Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit.
In efforts to continue her support of other parents who find themselves thrust into the insanity of the NICU, Ms Conn collaborated with Preemie Magazine Founder Deborah Discenza in creating the The Preemie Parent’s NICU Survival Guide: How to Maintain Your Sanity and Create a New Normal published in January, 2010.
Conn’s passion for film carried her through her first feature where she single-handedly raised the money, wrote, directed and produced Claire of the Moon, the maverick film about a woman’s journey to her sexual identity. The film garnered rave reviews and paved the way for lesbian themed cinema in 1991. Conn also created a FIRST for lesbian cinema: ancillary in the form of a novelization (in its 15th reprint and 10 Year Anniversary Republish) a making-of documentary MOMENTS (best-selling lesbian documentary ever made), soundtracks, posters, t-shirts, etc. She followed these projects with the award winning short film, Cynara…Poetry in Motion.
A two book deal with Simon Schuster produced the novels, Passion’s Shadow (1995) & Angel Wings (1997), a new age love story. The script adaptation for Angel Wings won the 2001 Telluride Film Festival’s Best Screenplay Award. In another pioneering effort, The Wedding Dress was chosen by AOL Time Warner for its new internet endeavor ipublish, which debuted in June 2001. She Walks in Beauty was published in September, 2001 and is currently in development as a feature film along with several other original screenplays Conn has penned.
Conn achieved industry recognition with her film Claire of the Moon and was a finalist in the prestigious Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. She believes in giving back to the community and sponsored the Claire of the Moon Scholarship in 1998, awarding second time novelists through the ASTRAEA Foundation.
Well known for her speed, quality and prolific ability to write in many genres, Conn has written five novels, a parent’s guide, two teleplays, nine screenplays, and has produced four soundtracks.
She currently resides with her life partner and photographer Marina Rice Bader and their family of (wonderful if precocious) six children in Los Angeles.