Ava Barry studied Film and Digital Media at U.C. Santa Cruz.  After university she worked as an editorial assistant at Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope: All-Story Magazine.  On the days she wasn’t Living the Dream, she woke up at four-thirty in the morning to make coffee for a tyrannical boss in Santa Cruz, then schlepped her way across town to work at a Chinese restaurant.  These jobs made her really, really, REALLY wish she had picked a more practical degree at college.

In 2011, Ava moved to Los Angeles and worked at Intrigue Film Studio and Bold Films, where she got to sit next to the jacket that Ryan Gosling wore in Drive.  No, she did not meet Ryan Gosling.  No, she did not have a charming meet-cute with the head of production, leading to a screenwriting job.  Instead, she continued to work at a variety of restaurants where she served a variety of celebrity clientele who made polite chit-chat and ordered expensive alcohol.  Again, no meet-cutes or job offers.

And now she lives in Australia.  Her house is in a national park where she regularly sees kangaroos, sulphur-crested cockatoos, rainbow lorikeets, king parrots, crimson rosellas, lyre birds, wallabies, and sometimes wombats.  She misses almost everything about Los Angeles – the food trucks, the random celebrity sightings, the craftsman-style bungalows, the hope and desperation – which is why she continues to write about the city and the film industry. She does not miss, however, the overzealous parking cops, underpaid restaurant jobs, or traffic.

Her first book, WINDHALL, is about a murder in Old Hollywood that has ramifications in present-day Los Angeles.  The murder is fake, but the city plays itself, so to speak.

Her second book, DOUBLE EXPOSURE, is about a wealthy young heiress who survives a brutal attack on her family, only to find herself the object of a murderous obsession.