ABOUT WREN VALENTINO

Wren Valentino is an educator, academic leader, and multidisciplinary storyteller whose career spans higher education, publishing, and film and television. With more than twenty-five years of teaching experience at the undergraduate and graduate levels, he has taught English, creative writing, humanities, public speaking, and theatre across community colleges, universities, and low-residency MFA programs, mentoring students from diverse academic and cultural backgrounds. His leadership roles have included Associate Dean of Career and Technical Education (CTE), Program Director and Lead Faculty for a Department of Theatre Arts and Dance, and faculty in a low-residency MFA program. His commitment to inclusive, student-centered education has been recognized with a Diversity and Inclusion Service Award. He currently serves as a Marketing Communications Analyst at Sacramento State’s College of Continuing Education, where he leads an award-winning marketing team and supports initiatives in lifelong learning and workforce development.

In parallel with his academic career, Wren is the founding CEO of Blue Dasher Productions, a creative company dedicated to developing and producing film and television projects while championing emerging storytellers. As a producer, he has contributed to more than one hundred independent films, including A Beast in the Manor, Dark Feast, Ever After, The Farmhouse Murders, Hollow Lake, I Feel Fine, Shredded, and A Soldier’s Descent. His work emphasizes genre storytelling, particularly in horror and thriller.

Wren is an accomplished screenwriter whose original work has been produced for the screen and recognized at film festivals worldwide, including the Beverly Hills Film Festival, Chicago Horror Film Awards, Los Angeles Film Awards, Omaha Film Festival, and Scream Queen Film Festival. His scripts have also placed in major competitions such as the Filmmatic Horror Screenplay Awards, ISA Fast Track Fellowship, ScreenCraft Feature Competition, Nashville Film Festival Screenwriting Competition, and the Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards. His television pilot Her Other Life earned first prize in the Fade In Awards TV Pilot/Web Series Competition and Best TV Pilot Screenplay at the Melbourne International Screenplay Awards, with additional recognition from Filmmatic and Final Draft’s Big Break Contest.

As an actor, Wren has appeared in more than forty films, including Amityverse, Desert Fiends 2, Four Nights in Fear Forest, Friday the 13th: Blood Loss, The Last Sleepover, Night of the Strangers, and Shadows of the Night, and will next appear in Midnight Maniac alongside Felissa Rose. Currently, he plays sassy former fashionista Velvet Vain on the popular web series Horror Hound Bites.

In addition to his screen work, Wren is a bestselling author of twenty-one novels across romance, thriller, young adult, and horror, as well as the author of more than seventy stage plays produced internationally, five poetry collections, and numerous screenplays. His writing has appeared in publications such as Atomic Flyswatter, The Best 10-Minute Plays, and several Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies. He is also a film critic and curator of Fantastic Classics, where he writes essays on cinema with a focus on film noir.

Wren holds a B.A. in Communications and English from Oglethorpe University (with honors), an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte, and completed UCLA’s Professional Program in Screenwriting. He is a member of Romance Writers of America and the International Screenwriters’ Association and has been recognized for his service to the writing community.