Hannah Forman was the first B’mitzvah at Kolot Chayeinu, in 1994, when the congregation was a year old.  She went on to high school In NYC, and then explored several colleges before graduating from Antioch University in Seattle.

Hannah is a multi award-winning writer, filmmaker, and arts organizer. In 2003 she self-published Ax Wound: Gender and the Horror Genre, a zine now credited in academic literature as the world’s first feminist horror publication. In 2009 she wrote the Women in Horror Month Manifesto, a call to action which went viral and spawned an international grassroots movement. 

Since 2015 she has continued that work in the form of producing and curating the Ax Wound Film Festival, which features horror films written and directed exclusively by women, nonbinary, and transgender filmmakers. In 2019 MovieMaker Magazine included Ax Wound in its list of the 30 best genre festivals in the world.

Hannah now lives in Ontario with her husband and is exploring ways to re-engage with her jewish spirituality.