Karen Walton profile

Karen Walton is the screenwriter behind the cult teen werewolf hit Ginger Snaps. She also has a whole lot of other writing credits.

Today, she divides her time between Montreal and Toronto, with the occasional jaunt to LA. She's wrapped up adapting Michael Turner's great novel The Pornographer's Poem, and is working on a new film with Jean-Marc Vallée of C.R.A.Z.Y. fame. 

I interviewed Karen for the Fall 2008 issue of Canadian Screenwriter. I generally find screenwriters fun to interview. Especially Canadian ones. They know how to tell a good story, and even the successful ones live a relatively marginalized existence -- so they tend to be down to earth and honest.

Within moments of my first approaching Karen, she was sending emails that sounded like they were meant for an old friend.

It was also refreshing to speak to someone who was unabashed in expressing her complete lack of interest in directing:

"I totally admired the directors, and totally understood the nature of the performance required from the actors. But what I really wanted to do was to able to continue working with lots of different kinds of directors on lots of different kinds of projects. If you become an auteur, if you become the director, that changes. Because you only ever get to be on your own set. You only get to have a converastion with who you invite to the party. And I fell in love with the idea that I didn't know yet what was possible. And what I really wanted to do was hang out and work with directors, not be one.”

You can read my story here.  Then drop by ink canada, the Facebook group she started to bring Canadian screenwriters together.