Western alumna pens Hollywood flick

She was unsure what kind of writing she wanted to do, but while typing script revisions for a company she discovered her passion for the spareness of film writing.

“I really liked the economy of scripts," she says. “In novels they would spend a couple of paragraphs with descriptive passages, and that's beautiful and everything, but once I saw screenplays, I could see that there was a very specific way of including all of that stuff in a different way."

Now living in California, Barker recalls her years as a Western English major and how the lessons of her professors have come to bear on her career.

“I remember my creative writing class with Don McKay," she says. “I was very shy and I didn't really see why I had to read my stuff out loud or comment on other student's work. He very kindly gave me a hard time about it."

Barker recalls her Huron University College teaching assistant driving her and fellow students to excel.  

“She was really hard on everyone in the class," she recalls. “But it was really just to get them to push themselves to try harder rather than writing like they did in high school. She really pushed us.

Barker is currently working on the final draft for the Hollywood picture All About Steve, scheduled to start shooting this summer, starring Sandra Bullock.