Abe Onakirerhemi

Abe was born and raised on the Southern coast of Nigeria where he spent most of his time reading encyclopedias, watching crime reenactment TV shows, and not talking to anyone his own age. He discovered himself at an all-girls Anglican boarding school and learned important life lessons like how fiction can be an escape, and how creative fourteen-year-old girls can be with their cruelty. He also made his first foray into writing fiction, specifically Hunger Games fanfiction, and eventually a couple of novellas and a sci-fi epic (lost to time). He studied Linguistics and Film as an undergrad at Boston University. The former was because of a book he read about lexicographers (the folks who write dictionaries), and the latter because he was a dozen or so credits short of graduating. Plus, why not dip your toe in the pool if you’re already at a school with one of the top film programs in the country? In his short time at BU’s College of Communications, he interned and subsequently freelanced for Blumhouse Productions as a Film Development Intern and as a reader for their Horror Screenwriting Fellowship in association with K Period Media. Since graduating from BU’s film program, he’s written two features and several pilots. Two of these had modest success in initiative programs, making the second round and longlist of the Black Boy/Black Girl Writes Mentorship Initiative and the Blacklist x GM Writer Driven Shorts Initiative respectively. Abe has been described as poorly socialized, obsessive-compulsive, and “likely autistic” by a therapist, psychiatrist, and a screenwriting professor, respectively. Apropos of nothing, he tends to write about women and genderqueer people who have a hard time expressing themselves.