Sarah Carbiener was born during one of South Dakota’s worst winters, and she has been climate hopping ever since, growing up in Florida, graduating from NYU’s Tisch School of the arts with a degree in dramatic writing, and following her first writing gig to a video game studio in Prince Edward Island, Canada. After two years of writing story and dialogue-based games such as Grey’ Anatomy: The Video Game, she vowed to never see snow again and moved to Los Angeles where she soon began working with her writing partner Erica Rosbe. Their first feature, the family film Return to Nim’s Island about a young, determined environmentalist trying to save her island home from poachers, premiered on the Hallmark Channel. They’re currently working with Mazur / Kaplan on a feature adaptation of Haley Tanner’s novel Vaclav and Lena, the story of a boy magician and his lost love, for which they’ve received a Cinereach Fellowship through the Sundance Institue. In addition to features centered on tenacious, imaginative teenagers, Sarah and Erica have written many television pilots and spec scripts, including a Girls spec which won the sitcom category at the Austin Film Festival in 2013. Sarah is thrilled to finally put her years of playing video games badly to use developing her and Erica’s latest feature, a comedy called The Sparkle Panthers, with Film Independent.