When Sabrina Barton taught at UT Austin, her most popular courses were "Hitchcock and Gender" and "Pygmalion's Fantasy: The Illusion of Ideal Beauty." Now she writes dark psychothrillers and twisted family dramas that explore similar obsessions. Her screenplay, BY DARK (quarterfinalist, 2022) is based on the true story of a serial killer in Austin, Texas, 1884-1885, who brutally targeted Black female servants. (O. Henry lived in Austin at the time and wrote to a friend that "Town is fearfully dull except for the frequent raids of the Servant Girl Annihilators, who make things lively in the dull hours of the night.") Barton's current projects include "Family Time," about a severely dysfunctional family that bears an uncanny resemblance to her own, and "Unfinished," a ghost story loosely inspired by Rebecca and The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Her pilot, "Two Women and a Truck," a story about smuggling and the Texas/Mexico border, reached the AFF quarterfinals in 2019.