BA, English, Hiram College
Writer and senior professor of practice Scott Lax is in his tenth year at CIA where he teaches writing, specializing in screenwriting. Scott is the recipient of the 2025 Dan Tranberg Award for Teaching Excellence.
A graduate in English from Hiram College, Scott has been a recipient of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bernard J. O'Keefe Scholarship in Nonfiction; the Sewanee Writers Conference Walter E. Dakin Fellowship in Fiction; six journalism awards for magazine essays, columns, and features; and four first place film festival awards, including Midwest Filmmaker of the Year at the Cleveland International Film Festival in 2002.
Scott received a Certificate of Congratulations from the City of Cleveland for his body of work in 2002 and was inducted into the Chagrin Falls High School Achievement Hall of Fame in 2016.
The Denver Post called Scott's first novel The Year That Trembled "powerful" and one of the year's "milestones in fiction." The Boston Herald called the feature film that he produced, based on that novel, "memorable and touching."
He adapted the novel into a two-act stage play, titled 1970, which ran for two weeks in the fall of 2023 at the Chagrin Valley Little Theatre. Previously, it was produced under the name The Year That Trembled at Cleveland's University School in 2003 and 2013.
Of his second novel, Vengeance Follows, which Lax adapted as a screenplay, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Ron Powers wrote, "Mesmerizing and masterful … gets inside the head of a lethal sociopath while maintaining a loving evocation of a quiet Ohio town with a Richard Russo-like respect for the human soul." The Midwest Book Review called the novel "a minor masterpiece of suspense and human nature and pronounced Lax, "A master wordsmith of the first order."
Scott has since adapted Vengeance Follows as a screenplay and is producing the feature film version of his novel with Rob Mayes, who will also direct and play the lead role. The film is currently in development.
Lax has taught creative writing on faculty at Hiram College, Lakeland Community College, and University School, as well as the Wildacres Writers Workshop in North Carolina, the South Carolina Writers Conference, Literary Cleveland, among others. He and has spoken and presented at dozens of libraries, schools, and civic organizations.
Scott has also written for numerous organizations such as Comedy Central, ESPN, and Major League baseball's Cleveland Guardians, where he also acted as a writing coach. He has been a professional speaker and worked as a speech writer for corporate, community, and social justice leaders.
A professional drummer since the age of 13, Lax has performed with Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Bo Diddley, among many musicians locally and nationally.
For more about information, please visit scottlax.com.
Photo by Finn Lax.
