Austin Bunn graduated from Yale University and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. A former magazine journalist, fiction writer and performer, he wrote "Kill Your Darlings" with his former college roommate and the film's director, John Krokidas. He is also the author, with the film producer Christine Vachon, "A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disaster" (Simon and Schuster). His writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Zoetrope, Best American Science and Nature Writing, The Pushcart Prize, and elsewhere. He teaches at Cornell University.