Nina Sadowsky
A New York City native, Nina R. Sadowsky is an entertainment lawyer (in recovery) who has worked as a film and television producer and writer for most of her career.
Her debut thriller, Just Fall, was published by Ballantine in March 2016. Her second novel, The Burial Society, was published in 2018, and is the first of a series, with The Empty Bed following in January 2020. Her fourth thriller, Convince Me, released August 2020, and her fifth, Privacy, is expected in 2022, both stand-alones. Her books have been translated into German, Spanish, Italian, French, Japanese, Turkish, and Serbian. The Burial Society novels are in development for television.
She has written numerous original screenplays and adaptations and done rewrites for such companies as The Walt Disney Company, Working Title Films, and Lifetime Television.
Sadowsky also wrote, directed, and produced the short film, The First Year’s A Bitch, a darkly funny take on the first year of marriage starring Christine Taylor and John Livingston, which was featured in numerous film festivals and which won the award for best editing at the New York Short Film Festival.
She served as President of Production for Signpost Films, a film financier and foreign distributor, where she worked on such projects as the Academy Award®-nominated The House of Sand and Fog, starring Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley.
Prior to joining Signpost, she served as President of Meg Ryan’s Prufrock Pictures for over five years. During her tenure, Prufrock landed first look feature deals with Fox 2000 and Castle Rock Entertainment and an overall long-form television deal with Polygram/Universal Television.
Sadowsky served as executive producer for the hit film The Wedding Planner starring Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey for Intermedia and Sony; produced Desert Saints, an independent film starring Kiefer Sutherland which premiered on Cinemax; produced the supernatural thriller Lost Souls, which marked the directorial debut of Academy Award®-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminsky for New Line Cinema; produced the telefilm Northern Lights, starring Diane Keaton for The Disney Channel; and served as executive producer for the animated half hour comedy pilot Quints for UPN.
She also produced Jumpin’ at the Boneyard starring Tim Roth, Jeffrey Wright, and Samuel L. Jackson for executive producer Lawrence Kasdan and Twentieth Century Fox, which was featured in the Sundance, Montreal, and Torino film festivals.
She also currently serves as Program Director for NYU Los Angeles, a “semester abroad” program geared toward advanced undergraduate students considering careers in the entertainment and media industries. Prior to joining NYU, Sadowsky served as part-time faculty at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts program for over a decade, teaching both writing and producing. Her students have been the recipients of many awards and accolades, including best scripted series at the College Television Awards, inclusion in the Cannes Film Festival Shorts Corner, and the Student Academy Awards®.
Sadowsky is a member of International Thrillers Writers, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the HUMANITAS Prize’s Woolfpack – an organization of women writers, directors, producers, and showrunners). She also serves as Director of Educational outreach for The HUMANITAS Prize and co-leads the Woolfpack-sponsored screenwriting lab at Hedgebrook.
Sadowsky graduated cum laude from Connecticut College with a major in dance and a minor in creative writing, and in the top 10% of her class from The Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where she served as Articles Editor for the Arts and Entertainment Law Journal.