words
movement
movement
entropic constructs of powerful specificity that can build bridges, clarify intents, uncover truths
movement
movement
movement
ephemeral realms both communal and private that can embody emotions, explore boundaries, reveal commonalities
Bridges, thresholds, and liminal spaces. They tell us what is now is not what must always be. They are a transition, acknowledging both history and possibility. Transitional realms are hopeful. Hope can elicit curiosity in the most clenched of minds.
Over the years, bridges became a metaphor for how I approach my work. Perhaps because they've always made my heart race. They also always made me a little uncomfortable. They have a language all their own. A liminal threshold from one place to another, hovering over untraversable space. A span both magical and practical. I believe if time is taken to understand the chasm between the points to be bridged, the means and method of what, where, and how to build will reveal themselves.
The arts have an opportunity to play a powerful role in social justice and cultural change. We must step bravely into that which is unknown or uncomfortable if society is to be inspired to follow suit. Stepping onto a bridge is an act of faith. I believe if artists create works of beauty and courage, those works might become both the bridge and the act; inspiring humanity and bravery in our audiences.
That last thing I'll say here is that I've clocked enough time on the planet to have learned no one changes their mind because they're told their deeply held beliefs or identity is stupid and wrong. We have to find another way out of our societal stalemate. A story, powerfully told...one that steers clear of lecturing, shaming or inevitably bleak dystopias...has the potential to bridge us. Give us a means back to one another towards, perhaps not necessarily shared beliefs and choices, but shared humanity.
featured work
Magpie
Feature Screenplay adaptation
Magpie explores appropriation and masking as the means through which an undiagnosed autistic woman builds a functional identity, burying her true one in the process. Maggie is difficult, odd, and soulful-in search of not only answers to a childhood mystery but an authenticity she has no idea how to recognize.
ACCORD(ing)
a sensorially immersive world of performance art, large scale puppetry, installations and soundscapes to examine how the human mind gathers, processes and decides truths.
co-created and produced with TÉA Artistry
49th Street and Other Stories
a mini documentary following the development of a full length movement play about an isolated young woman trying to build a life for herself in New York City.
MMDG / Ailey Center workshop footage
Tunnels Above Ground
a short film about disconnection and loss.
Executive Produced by Duke Films
premiered at OIFF 2017
words
Magpie - novel (release March 2023 - Unleash Press)
Now available at Barnes and Noble, Unleash Press, and Amazon
Unknown and unattached, Maggie Morris moves through her days as a polished collection of patterns. Her only honest relationship is with the dormant tree outside her Brooklyn loft window. When she unexpectedly runs into her childhood best friend, Dana, a Tsalagi girl who suddenly disappeared the summer they turned nine, Dana’s cryptic references about the events surrounding her disappearance launches Maggie down a rabbit hole not only about that long ago summer, but about who she’s become and why.
Magpie explores appropriation and masking as the means through which an undiagnosed autistic woman builds a functional identity, burying her true one in the process. Maggie is difficult, odd, and soulful—in search of not only answers to a childhood mystery, but an authenticity she has no idea how to recognize.
*recipient of the 2022 Unleash Press Book Prize
* recipient of the 2021 Rona Jaffe Foundation Breadloaf Writers Conference Scholar Award
2023 Midwest Book Review -
Paths divided by circumstance and life can sometimes cross again, but those linked by memory have since become someone else as time passes -- especially when a death and a disappearance introduced an estrangement that has lasted for decades. In Magpie, these two now-disparate former friends are thrown back together in an unexpected, unusual manner that introduces past memories and conundrums into present-day experiences. The circumstances involving a mother's death, a Tsalagi woman who also vanished from Maggie's childhood, and a mystery that threatens to raise long-repressed memories about what really happened make for a vivid read.
For some readers, this novel will stir unpleasant memories of choices towards peace over adventure; predictability over excitement. As Maggie moves into many revelations, so readers will find their hearts tugged and challenged by her self-discoveries and the truth that lies at the center of her adult choices.
Readers and libraries looking for novels about friendship, mystery, growth, and "Being part of the wild things that surround me...Not separate. Part of something bigger." will find Maggie a powerful story. It ideally will reach a wide audience with its landscapes of seasonal and relationship transformations.
"The wry, idiosyncratic, yet deeply vulnerable voice Carson elevates in Magpie, speaks for so many of us" - Laura Cronk, author of Ghost Hour and Having Been an Accomplice
"A tour de force of narrative consciousness in the tradition of Jonathan Lethem, Magpie immerses the reader in a compelling mystery and social critique."
- Jamie Price, Ph.D., author of The Call
O.T.P. (TV series in development)
Sundance Co//ab
Liminal Starling
Feature film in development in partnership with LaWanda Hopkins.
Sundance Co//ab
a savage, simple
"Truth like death, kills what came before."
Full length play inspired by Nawal El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero.
(Finalist, Doug & Victoria Ross Foundation - Playwriting Award)
You Can't Get to Heaven in a Miniskirt
Hybrid physical theatre play about gender shaming and purity hazing of young females in church youth groups.
*Act I draft published in MeetingHouse Literary Journal (Dec. 2020)
Interior, Brooklyn
One act play
Scotomas
Full length play in development
Perception, collective agreements, and how we define "mental health"