Alison McMahan is an award-winning screenwriter, author, and filmmaker. She was the president of Homunculus Productions, LLC, from 2006 to 2025. Her best known film is Bare Hands and Wooden Limbs (2010) narrated by Sam Waterston. McMahan is a two-time Derringer Award nominee and an "Other Distinguished Mystery Stories" author in Best American Mystery Stories of 2018. Her short mysteries have appeared in numerous mystery anthologies and ThrillRide magazine. One of her non-fiction books, Alice Guy Blaché, Lost Visionary of the Cinema (Bloomsbury 2002) was translated into Japanese and Spanish and adapted into the documentary, Be Natural (2018).