Behind the scenes.

Want to get straight to something Lex has written? Here you go. (Fresh at November 2022.)

Lexia "Lex" Snowe is a writer of thrillers for the page and for screen. Her stories tend to combine police/espionage with noir (think: corruption not necessarily confined to the wrong side of the law.) A number of her upcoming projects also feature aviation, the study of aeronautical engineering being one of her leading interests. Foremost among her influences are: Richard Stark (aka. Donald E. Westlake), Ed McBain, Lionel Davidson, and Tom Clancy. (And, yes, those are all dudes. So that's... awkward.)

When not writing genre fiction and screenplays within these perimeters, Lex is writing literary fiction and poetry as Zoe Marie Bel. (Previously, "Winter Bel", an alias she still uses for certain art projects.)

Born in 1980, Lex is a graduate of Oxford University (a proud #Magdalenite) and London Film School. She presently splits time between Paris and Los Angeles, the latter city being where most of her fiction takes place.

Lex Snowe hanging with cars in Hollywood.

Snowe on Snowe

  • Favorite movie
  • A complicated question. Let's go with Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven for entertainment and style, and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive for capturing what cinema can do that other forms cannot.
  • Favorite novel
  • This changes quite often, as I read a lot, but right now it's A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. It's an absolute page-turner, even by modern standards, and rich in emotion, both noble and ugly. I'm pleased that my favorite contemporary writer, Donna Tartt, whose The Secret History felt like a long letter from a soul mate, shares my love of Dickens.
  • Favorite screenplay
  • Again, complicated. I spend many a dreamy afternoon in the WGA Library (formally, the WGF Library, but it's in the WGA building), devouring screenplay gems, so this is asking me to pick a favorite child. Brian Helgeland's L.A. Confidential is one I read again and again. Ted Tally's The Silence Of The Lambs is thriller writing at its visceral best, complete with a blind-spot twist. And, yes, both those scripts won Oscars for writing.
  • Pet peeve
  • Folks who dismiss genre writing as inherently inferior. The one-word rebuttal is, of course, "Shakespeare..." (Who wrote strictly within genre.)

Awards and recognition

Feature scripts: Fault Lines (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship 2014, Quarter Finalist); Infirm Terrain (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship 2012 and 2013, Quarter Finalist)

TV scripts: Outbound (Sundance Episodic Storytelling Lab 2015, Second Round)

Short scripts: Midnight Oil (Austin Film Festival Short Screenplay Contest 2017, Second Round); Black and Blue (Screencraft Short Script Contest 2015, Semi Finalist)

Fiction: Footage (2016 Launch Pad Manuscript Competition, Top 50); Two Scorpions (Screencraft Cinematic Short Story Contest 2016, Semi Finalist)

Contact

Send messages for Lexia Snowe to: office@winterbelarts.com

Other things Lex does that influence her writing
  • Weight lifting: Much of my work centers on physically strong women, and it happens that I am one myself. I've never been satisfied with the depiction of female strength in fiction and film — even the present buzz for "strong female leads" seems fetishistic. I want to see more women whose physical strength feels real: not swaggering or manly or comically defiant of biological reality, but assuredly capable nonetheless.
  • Coding: I taught myself code in my early twenties, and I've never regretted it. The web is the new frontier of publishing and distribution. Fluency in web is fluency in future.
  • Photo walking: I walk entire cities with my camera for days on end, because only through a viewfinder do I begin to understand a place. Through this, I've gained an intricate sense of when an image can articulate something better than words, and vice versa.

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