
ERIN COPEN HOWARD
Selected Awards & Honors

After more than two decades developing television in Los Angeles, Erin turned to feature screenwriting, where her high-concept genre films have earned honors and recognition in over 50 competitions. A Memphis native and University of Arizona graduate, she's also a single mother of three, including a profoundly gifted neurodivergent son who began college at 11, an experience that continually shapes the way she thinks about intelligence, resilience, and what makes people extraordinary.Whether writing horror, sci-fi, thrillers, or drama, Erin creates characters who challenge fate, reject expectation, and fight to become the authors of their own stories.
Feature Screenplays

Counting on Clark
Feature Screenplay (94 pgs)
YA Sci-fi AdventureLogline: A 17-year-old math prodigy joins a time-traveling mission to rescue her future self, only to discover love, identity, and the key to saving the universe in one gravity-defying adventure through space.
Multiple Awards Including:
Hollywood Storytellers 2025 - Genre Winner
Final Draft Big Break 2025 – Top 10 Sci-Fi Finalist
The Women’s List 2025 – Finalist, Best Scripts of the Year
California Intl Children’s Film Festival 2026 - Finalist

Kept
Feature Screenplay (80 pgs)
HorrorLogline: A fully conscious doll is thrown away to make room for new Christmas toys and endures relentless cruelty from both humans and her own kind on a brutal journey to get back home.
Cinema Obscura Salem 2026 - First Place Winner
LA Crime and Horror Film Fest 2026 - Finalist
13Horror.com Screenplay Awards 2026 - Finalist

So Spineless
Feature Screenplay (80 pgs)
HorrorLogline: After her research is sabotaged, a driven biotech student discovers her altered drug liquefies the human skeleton. Desperate to save her career, she exploits the defect, unleashing escalating consequences that spiral beyond her control.
Breaking Walls Thriller Contest 2025 - Top Ten Finalist
Zed Fest Screenplay Competition 2025 - Semifinalist
Frights! Camera! Action! 2026 - Most Messed Up Death Award
A Night of Horror Intl. Film Festival 2026 - Semifinalist

So Spoiled
Feature Screenplay (88 pgs)
HorrorA New Nightmare
From the World of "So Spineless"Logline: An overlooked dancer in a toxic dance company contracts a flesh-eating infection that turns her skin green just days before a talent scout could launch her career, and when it spreads to the other dancers and their bodies begin to rot, she refuses to let anything stop the show.

I'm a Genie in a Wine Bottle Feature Screenplay (98 pgs)
Rom-Com/FantasyLogline: Trapped inside a cursed wine bottle as a genie, a desperate young woman plots to seduce her handsome new master, a private chef, into wishing her free, never revealing that the wish will imprison him instead. But when she unexpectedly falls in love with him, she must decide whether her own freedom is worth condemning him to an eternity in the bottle.

APEX
Feature Screenplay (116 pgs)
Sports Action ThrillerLogline: In a future where global wars are replaced by televised combat between each nation’s elected “fighter president,” a female MMA trainer becomes America’s new Champion in Chief and must survive the world’s deadliest fighters while uncovering a global conspiracy.
Hollywood Storytellers Genre Competition - Finalist
Page Turner Awards 2025 – Longlist Finalist
Emerging Screenwriters 2026 – Semifinalist

Wish Seeds
Feature Screenplay (90 pgs)
Family Drama/Magical RealismLogline: When a single mother and her autistic son discover wish-granting seeds that revive their dying desert town, their new life blooms with hope, until her abusive ex returns, threatening to destroy everything they’ve grown.
Faith and Family Awards 2026 - Winner, Best Family Feature
California Intl Children’s Film Festival 2026 - Finalist
Faith, Hope, and Love Competition 2026 - Semifinalist
Creative Screenwriting Unique Voices 2026 - Semifinalist

The Storm in Her
Feature Screenplay (80 pgs)
ThrillerLogline: A traumatized woman whose emotions trigger catastrophic storms hides alone in the Arizona desert until contract killers stumble upon her remote home, forcing her to embrace the power she’s spent her life trying to suppress.
FilmQuest Film Festival and Screenplay Comp 2026 - Finalist
Filmmatic Horror Screenplay Awards 2026 - Finalist
Zed Fest Screenplay Competition 2025 - Semifinalist

Death in Reality
Feature Screenplay (94 pgs)
Drama / Inspired by a True StoryLogline: A control-obsessed reality-TV producer who’s built her career scripting other people’s lives is forced to face the one story she can’t control - the collapse of her industry and the desperate fight to save her dying child.
Hollywood Storytellers Genre Competition - Finalist
California Women’s Film Festival 2025 - Finalist
Short Screenplays

We'll Be Safe Here
Short Screenplay (15 pgs)
DramaLogline: After fleeing domestic violence, a mother and her children settle into a quiet small town that seems to offer the safety they desperately need, but the peace they find there conceals a devastating truth that will change everything.
Multiple awards, including:
Hollywood Storytellers 2025 - Grand Prize Winner
Golden Pen Script Awards 2025 - Winner, Best Short
Big Apple Screenplay Competition Shorts Ed. 2026 - Winner
Cinematic Scribe Screenwriting Contest 2026 - Finalist
Hollywood Just4Shorts Competition 2026 - Finalist

Think Apocalypse
Short Screenplay (21 pgs)
Dark Comedy/HorrorLogline: Five struggling screenwriters think they’ve won the meeting of a lifetime, until they discover the studio head is an ancient being who plans to make their terrible movie ideas come true and combine them into humanity’s next mass extinction.
Multiple awards, including:
Intl. Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival 2026 - First Place Winner
Hollywood Storytellers 2025 - Finalist
Zed Fest Screenplay Competition 2025 - Semifinalist