Born in Baltimore, Maryland and a resident of Los Angeles since 1995, HENRY TURNER is an Award-Winning filmmaker, Film Festival Executive, entertainment journalist and author. Growing up in Baltimore, he met people and had experiences that inform much of his writing, and some have served as the inspiration for his acclaimed young adult novel ASK THE DARK (HMH Clarion) which garnered numerous award nominations and accolades including the prestigious Edgar Award and the Anthony. His most recent young adult novel, HIDING (Clarion, 2018), hit bookshelves in 2018 to rave reviews, and received an unprecedented endorsement from SAVE.org (the National Suicide Prevention and Education Organization), from ALAN, and from TeachingBooks.org, as well as from its youth readership.

Both ASK THE DARK and HIDING were bought at auction via a bidding war between Harper Collins, Penguin and HMH Clarion. The writer/director/producer of five acclaimed independent feature films, Henry’s features WILBUR WHATELEY and TRASHMONSTER won several awards including Best Mixed Film and Video Feature at the Chicago International Film Festival, and subsequently screened at over twenty other festivals around the world. His short film PYM, based on Edgar Allen Poe’s story The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, garnered film festival awards and was given production grants from the Mayor’s Office for Art and Culture in Baltimore, Maryland and Henry Turner received a lifetime honorary membership to the Edgar Allan Poe Historical Society.

Henry was a founding member of the Slamdance Festival where he ran the Short Film Competition and created, ran and hosted The Short Film Lounge in Park City, Utah, where he headed programming for six years, and where he and his team created a platform for many talented filmmakers, most notably director Christopher Nolan, director Rian Johnson, the Russo brothers.  At Slamdance he also created the $99 Dollar Short Film Series, and was an originator of the On the Road series, taking Slamdance features to museums, schools, and festivals around the world, including the Smithsonian Institute and the Cannes Film Festival. Henry was also a founder of the Slamdance Screenplay Competition. 

Henry studied for six years with the esteemed novelist John Rechy -- recipient of the Pen Faulkner Lifetime Achievement Award and the L.A. Times Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement -- in his USC Professional Writers Masters Degree Program. Henry also studied with Hubert Selby Jr., author of Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream. Having become friends with Selby in the final year of his life, Henry organized Selby's final public appearance, reading, and screening of the documentary A Couple of Things I Know About Hubert Selby Jr. at his weekly screening series at Cinespace in Los Angeles in 2003.