As a filmmaker, Austin co-wrote the script for Kill Your Darlings (Sony Pictures Classics), starring Daniel Radcliffe and Dane DeHaan, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and won the International Days Prize at the Venice Film Festival. He has written feature screenplays and television pilots for Fox 2000, Lionsgate, Participant Media, Tomorrow Studios and served as a mentor at the Screenwriters’ Colony (Nantucket) and Outfest Screenwriting Lab. His award-winning short films, including “Lavender Hill,” “In the Hollow,” “Ascent,” “Ghosts” and “Campfire” have screened nationally and internationally at Frameline (SF), OutFest (LA), InsideOut (Toronto), Brooklyn Film Festival (NY), Provincetown International Film Festival (MA), Sidewalk Film Festival (AL), and elsewhere. 

He is the author of the short story collection The Brink, published by Harper Perennial and selected as a Lamdba Lit finalist and Electric Literature “Best Short Story Collection.” He is working on an original audio drama for Audible called DENALI and his next book on short film screenwriting will be published with Bloomsbury (2024). 

Austin has worked for nearly a decade as a journalist. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Zoetrope, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Science and Nature Writing, and elsewhere. His monologue, “Basement Story,” won the Missouri Review Audio Essay Prize and has been broadcast on WBEZ, Third Coast, Australian Radio, and Michigan Public Radio. The audiobook of The Brink won the Audie 2017 for best fiction collection from Audible. He is also a Michener-Copernicus fellow in fiction. He won the Carpenter Memorial Advising Award for his work helping students connect with professionals in film, television, theatre and media.