ALISON O'BRIEN MAREK is an award-winning writer and director who's combined words and images professionally since she was in her late teens. Alison received her MFA in film directing from New York University. Her thesis, "The Playground," was sponsored by a grant from Showtime Networks Inc. and broadcast extensively on their channels. Her short film "The Three-Body Solution" was sponsored by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and won the Director's Award at the Hearts & Minds Film Festival. She's also been nominated for a Los Angeles Emmy Award and received a Gold Aurora Award and Bronze Telly Award for public service announcements she's written or directed.
Inspired by her dad, Alison began drawing at age 1, became obsessed with movies at 2, and penciled her first comic strip at 7. She turned those early obsessions into a graphic novel called “Desert Streams” -- a darkly comic look at young girl's search for happiness -- which was published by Piranha Press, an imprint of DC Comics. A second Piranha book, "Sparrow," followed shortly after. She also wrote and illustrated a comic strip, "Fido Kaplan," about a woman's emotional entanglements with men and her dog, that was published in Brooklyn's The Prospect Press and by Fairchild Publications in their weekly "Travel Today!"
After working as an actor and stage manager in children's and local theater and studying acting with Earle Hyman, Alison attended and was Valedictorian at Hunter College. During her studies at Hunter, she was inspired and mentored by the playwright Tina Howe and the memoirist Louise DeSalvo. She's also taken a series of Creative Integration workshops with Corey Mandell in LA.
Alison teaches filmmaking to students of all ages at New York Film Academy in Los Angeles, MFA students at Akira Kurasawa University. She also writes/directs/produces shorts, feature films, videos, reality TV and documentaries. She's the former managing editor and video director for the online trade magazine, TDmonthly.com, where she shot, edited and produced thousands of toy videos and interviews.