James W. Hawk is an author and an award-winning filmmaker who was born in New Eagle, Pennsylvania, and grew up in East Cleveland, Ohio. He is of German, Irish, Scottish, and Native American (Seneca) descent and a Mayflower descendant. Hawk attended Ohio University in Architecture and completed his higher education at Cleveland State University as a Mechanical Engineer. He pursued a career in industrial sales and marketing with a Fortune 500 company, which resulted in relocations to Rochester, New York, South Bend, Indiana, and New Haven, Connecticut. Before Hawk actively engaged in writing and publishing his stories, he was and still is a filmmaker. As a filmmaker, he wrote many more scripts than he had the time or money to make into films. So he thought he would convert them into print versions. Anyway, much of his background is filmmaking-related, so let us start there. Hawk’s first independent film project was a two-hour cinema verite called Old School Roadster, which aired on Connecticut television. It is the story of a guy who built a car from the ground up in his garage. One of Hawk’s films was recently exhibited at a Rome, Italy, art exhibition. One of his short animation films was an award winner at a New Delhi, India, film festival. Four of his movies were semi-finalists at film festivals. One of Hawk’s films was recently awarded semi-finalist at a science fiction film festival out of a thousand entries. He has screened films at 48 film festivals/venues worldwide, with 93 films being official selections. He has also had his films shown on local television. Hawk wrote, produced, and directed his first scripted short film, Alpha to Omega: Part 4, with limited resources and plenty of ingenuity. Since then, he has produced, written, and directed many narrative short films, animation films, experimental films, time-lapse films, documentaries, music videos, and industrial presentations. Jan Harlan (executive producer for Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg) viewed Hawk’s work and gave it high accolades. F. Miguel Valenti viewed Hawk’s work and assessed it as better than much of what is released these days. Hawk has also worked for the Connecticut Film Industry Training Program for three years as an Associate Producer and Director of the “behind the scenes” film of their short film project. He has been interviewed several times on television regarding the making of some of his short films. His work is represented on IMDb, where he is one of the top lifetime contributors. He is a colleague of the USVAA (United States Veteran’s Artist Alliance). He also serves on the advisory committee of MICA (Made in Connecticut Arts), and MOCCAI (Museum of Celebrated Cartoonists and Illustrators). He continues to make short films and has added published author to his resume. He recently published the first short story of his MALAKI Anthology, TO beta-VANVERDEN AND BACK, on Amazon Kindle. Clyde Phillips, a writer and producer for the award-winning television series, DEXTER, gave VANVERDEN a 5-star rating. Hawk has also published two more short stories, WILLARD’S FUNDAMENTAL FORCE, and FAILURE, which garnered numerous great reviews. Websites Published works website: http://www.alephtotaw.com/ Studio website: http://hawkmedia-studios.com/ Production website: http://www.hawkfilme.com/