Shauna O’Meara is a screenwriter and multiple-Aurealis-Award winning short story writer based in the cold, mountainous reaches of far southern Australia.

A feature and TV writer in the action-adventure, thriller, and dramedy space, Shauna’s aim is to combine complex concepts with popular genre tropes to create stories that explore contemporary social issues while keeping audiences hooked to the end.

Shauna’s love of quality film and TV spans the full genre spectrum from workplace sitcoms, societal- critique thrillers, monster-in-the-house movies, and science-quests, to the incredible run of iconic science fiction, natural-disaster and comedy films of the 1990s and 2000s. Her favourite films include The Big Short, Adaptation, Parasite, Twister, Moon, The Way Way Back, and Talladega Nights.

Shauna is inspired by the cool science and accessible storytelling style of Michael Crichton, the creeping tension of John Carpenter, and the incisive social satire and ensemble character-work of Adam McKay. Her work centres upon three-dimensional characters whose world-view and circumstances shape the narrative: competent, professional and working-class women in their many forms; complex chess-move antagonists; found families; and thrown-together teams of regular people that audiences can see themselves in. Ever looking for high concept means of telling the smaller, personal tales of what it is to be human, Shauna’s humour-laced work often touches upon themes of ambition, class mobility, financial security, belonging, and the opportunity cost of the paths in life not taken.

Devils Reach, Shauna’s Script Pipeline feature, is a wilderness survival thriller set among the people and landscapes of the rugged, timber-and-sea countryside of Tasmania. Exploring the divisive forces of gentrification upon rural and remote communities, Devils Reach draws real-life inspiration from Shauna’s former career as an outback veterinarian.

Shauna grew up in Perth, where the beaches are stunning and the white pointers very hungry. She is currently writing an Australian shark movie that isn’t about surfing ;)

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