Portfolio
Screenwriting
Timeax
Orgasms that makes you travel through time? It's a trip for this sexagenarian. Will she ever get home? Or want to?
Timeax advanced as a Semifinalist Winner of the 2024 ScreenCraft Virtual Pitch Competition
Limited Series
Utopiatarianism
One-Hour Drama
When two children escape a post-apocalyptic American ravaged by war, they must decide if they'll assimilate for a spot on a utopian island that promises eternal safety and security. If they promise to take a secret pill for the rest of their lives of course.
Half-Hour Comedy
People with Abilities
Cut
AyeMe was your regular tethered white-collar criminal going to her fast food job. Until she thinks of a new trick: scamming disability benefits. Then a police car runs her over, she's diagnosed with paraplegia, and needs the benefits for real. Will she be able to adapt to her disabled body in an ableist society, or slip back into her old ways?
People with Abilities is a Quarterfinalist Winner of the 2023 Black Boy/Black Girl Writes Mentorship.
A hairdresser has to find a way to keep her salon afloat after a robot stylist opens up shop across the street. Heads will roll and there will be blood, because wouldn't you do anything to keep your small business alive?
Short Satire Film
Breakout Rooms
Short Satire Film
What can be worse than a Zoom call? A Zoom call with a killer as the host! Can the sign language interpreter save the meeting in time before the permanent disconnection?
Z.O.A
Drama Feature
Z.O.A is a treatise on the female experience in a small town where a woman’s entire life is decided on the day she’s born, and the only way to escape it is to move. But not all the women leave because who would keep the town running? Zeva is stuck in the middle, wanting a fresh start but accustomed to the coziness of the Christian right, her codependent foster mother, and playing along with the harassment she receives from work. But when Olesia becomes stuck inside Zeva’s body, Zeva’s only option is to adapt. Olesia’s ticket out is joining the army, but Zeva is nowhere close to being qualified. Soon, Zeva and Olesia learn their supernatural accident is the serendipitous arrangement they’ve been looking for when it comes to confidence, independence, and romance. Yet the two women are keeping secrets from each other that will tear them apart, and ensure any plans of escape from the town and each other are dead once and for all.
Token Fat Dancer
Comedy Feature
Courtney just wants to keep the doors open to her Missouri-based dance studio. So when a famous L.A. singer wants to use her as a backup dancer for a new music video she's all in. Then the fatphobic comments pile in and Courtney becomes an overnight sensation in body positivity politics. Courtney starts to enjoy the spotlight but will she be willing to fight for her values or decide to leave them all behind to extend her 15 minutes of fame?
Token Fat Dancer is a Quarterfinalist Winner of the 2022 ScreenCraft Screenwriting Fellowship.
The Psychology Student
Graduating with a Bachelor's in Psychology is supposed to be fun. Yet Melanie can't shake the unethical practices going on in her capstone shadowing session. Will Melanie speak up for the patient, or ride it out to ensure she gets the signature she needs to pass?
Short Satire Film
Specs
The Gang Decides to Kill Themselves
Spec Script
No more Charlie Work. No more Giant Bird. No more Golden God. No more Pussy Fingers. No more Froggy. This is it jabronis.
When Barry Gave Sally Cold Feet
Spec Script
Barry and Sally were sitting in a tree. Barry wants marriage and Sally wants space. And how does NoHo Hank and Fuches end up at a strip club? It goes there in this episode.
Short Stories
Faux-Collar Crime
A first person plural microfiction piece about what happens when you make the fuck around and find out graph your scripture.
Faux-Collar Crime was published in December 2024 on the Medium publication Flashes of Fiction.
Yo·U·pdate
Where cybergenetics and eco-activists fight for national spotlight, Yo·U·pdate explores the prophetic sci-fi genre that insists that after the takeover of cyborg entities the only threat left to nature will be leftover humans. After the world decided the only way to restore the environment was through technology, the nation birthed a divide between the Skelechelons and the Endoskeletons. Through the development of biomechantronics any human or Endoskeleton has the choice to completely transmogrify into a cyborg entity. Arachne was raised to believe that the Endoskeletons should rule. Mom, a survivor and chairwoman of the Multiple Sclerosis society sees Skelechelons as a cop-out from the human experience while botanist Dad views the side as instruments for government subservience. It is only when Arachne has an accident that requires her to use a wheelchair that her parents consider the alternatives and push each other away by their decisions. When Arachne grows up and reunites with two children who have the likeness of her parents, she must decide who she will favor and what that will mean to the people she renounces.
Yo·U·pdate won Honorable Mention at the 2022 L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest.
Why Exclusion is So Easy to Write
In my proposal, “Why Exclusion is So Easy to Write” I talk about my hesitation of writing a main character who has a physical disability when I don’t have one. I conceded that I have the right because my purpose is to approach intersectionality in a sci-fi universe while using characters who do not have physical disabilities to focalize through alongside characters with disabilities.
AgePlay
All the world's really is a stage. In this dystopia there are the Playwrights who write the scripts and the Protagonists who are programmed to follow them. Except Lillian is pretty sick of it and is willing to do whatever it takes to get control of her own life. Will she get to before the curtains fall?
Interpretation of Some Body
He is such a nice guy. Creepy but with good intentions. He just wanted to make sure the sex worker got a proper burial. But this surgery he's talking about getting is setting the whole town on edge. Should they be?
Poetry
a missourian girl
A Missourian girl does not have sex
It looks too aggressive
She’s waited this long
Is her mindset regressive?
A Missourian girl does not have sex
She stopped her pap smear, teary-eyed, halfway through
The doctor said she’ll wait until the Missourian girl has sex
Doctor’s orders. Does she have to?
A Missourian girl does not have sex
Could throw her into an episode, and add another constant financial investment
Birth control messes with hormones and weakens prescriptions
And she could still end up pregnant?
A Missourian girl does not have sex
She considers a hysterectomy, though it costs four times more than a vasectomy
They don’t consider women until they’re mothers
She is not easily deserving of such clemency.
A Missourian girl does not have sex
But might have it whether she likes it or not, god forbid
There’s a 1 in 5 chance. The lottery doles out more losers than winners
The system wouldn’t work unless it did.
A Missourian girl does not have sex
But life could still lead her to pregnancy
Roe V. Wade died
Actions out of state could turn into a felony.
A Missourian girl does not have sex
There’s too much to fear
And if she ever did
She would be too afraid to still live here.
ābati
I try to not think of your culture in terms of its injeria
that is temporarily soft, meant to be torn into pieces
and leave an aftertaste
I crave more but there are not enough international stores
to appease, my hunger dulls
I eat white bread instead
There is, no language class for me to take to speak your tongue
So I shall not eat of it.
flyaway
Air of screams, laughs, and chants drift by pieces
of flyaway hair as we strain
to listen. Foot in front of foot on the fallen log beside
the gravel road that is rarely used.
My cat walks with me and her ears twitch to
one denomination.
I don’t turn my head to stare at the building or the
few cars.
Weekdays is for resting on their back porch and watch the trees
watch us. Their underground shed for paws to run on
claws in. Never meeting gravel to gravel or say word
to tongues.
Eye to exterior and allow the structure to be sentient.
Sun from leaves from looking up not thinking big.
Air of screams, laughs, and chants drift by pieces
of flyaway hair as we strain.
flyaway was published in the print edition of the 2015 March Issue of TeenInk Magazine.
walk with them
Intelligence asserts it is the controller of their own universe
while being clothed with a smug smile
noticing that they are speaking aloud with no audience
Ignorance struts with its many companions
coated with purplish-blue stiches and scars
constantly turning back to see where it once was
Freedom lingers in the air to fill their nostrils
dressed invisible from head to toe
whispering in their heads, “You have the choice.”
Serenity laughs loud enough to be heard by all
arrayed with a look of longing
waiting for someone to believe in its existence
walk with them won 1st place at the 2017 Missouri Writers Guild Poetry Contest.
if there was an empty pond
If there was an empty pond
they’d throw a stick in it
a clear sky
they’d fill with a firework
a plain landscape
would be unearthed for their dead body
even on the side of the road
where there is no sound
it would be pierced with their scream
because nothing has value in itself
unless he inserts himself into it
everything is his backdrop
the heels beneath his shoes
and though no one asks
and he never asks for permission
he inserts himself anyway
until everything around
is defined by him
and him alone
fire and fight
Anger was the fire
Bitterness was the fuel
and from what I've tasted of desire
that always made me a fool,
Patience was the answer
My door without a key
I'd hold those who favor fire
A Hell that never sleeps,
Anguish was the ending
Tears forced out of my head
but if I had to perish twice
I'd be a book that's never read,
Indignation was a waste
So many love their vice
and I think I know enough hate
to see it always suffice
third person omniscient
a family headshot
I want to write,
and have it be read
I want to speak,
and other know what I said
If I’m gonna write, I’ll need some more lead.
She wants to sing,
and people get her sought
She wants to be,
what no man had bought
If I’m gonna sleep, I’ll need a cot.
He wants to rule,
things we yet know
He wants to first step,
in freshly fallen snow
If I’m gonna eat, I’ll have to go.
We want a light
that shines for all,
to make so radiant
in case of a fall
If I’m gonna hide, I’ll need a wall.
You want a reason
To understand that truth,
It does not have to be immediate
depending on your youth
If I’m gonna sit, I’ll need a booth.
I want to give
what has not been sent,
I want to live
and not pay a cent
To see the world in third person omniscient.
third person omniscient was published in the 2014 Monett High School Yearbook.
One of your cousins found this photo in her collection
You don’t have any collections of yourself
Especially when you were younger because then you must remember you were
younger and the saturation is of
a yellow hue almost fading into an
orange
You send me the photo by taking a photo of the photo
and sending it via text
but there doesn’t seem to be any cropping done on this one
It is a family gathering when you were six or maybe ten
I’m not good at ages
And the lens is that there is no lens as everyone is looking in different directions
Except you
You and your sister and your uncle who is sitting in a folded chair
Are looking at me amidst the chaos of everyone else looking everywhere else
I blow up the photo on my laptop and it is the same
You three stand out
But my eyes are fixed to the sister with her arms wrapped around your mother
A grandmother I wish to see more of
more photos of
Then you remind me that the uncle is dead
And so is your other uncle who is resting on one knee
And for some reason I still fixate on all of the aunts who are still alive
Looking in different directions
And wonder if they have their own photos
That only they are a part of.
Something's Gotta Give
What has been, must be let go
this is what the world now knows
never keep, never stay
Our world doesn’t work that way
because we know, no better.
Overcome, overtake
nothing ever feels this way
closing walls, phoning calls
If only someone would answer
because we know, no better.
What we see, it what we become
that is the easiest part
always change, rearrange
The past from the beginning
because we know, know better.
Yet what we know, is not enough
for there is so much more
if only we could open up
The closed and locked up doors, but
Still we are no, no better.
something’s gotta give was published in the 2015 Poetry Collection Eloquence.
Essays
Putting Women Back in (His?)story
My book review of Cari Beauchamp's autobiography Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood published in the Citizen Jane blog at Stephens College.
Abstinence-Only Curriculum
I could have opted out of the class, but I was curious to see if they really taught nonsense. I didn't like being right.
Trigger Warnings
I'm all for artistic freedom, but can I have a skip button for moments that make me so uncomfortable I'd rather not watch the show all?
Toxic Nice Guys
Disney. Nickeloden. Cartoon Network. I'm calling you all out for this.
Fat Women Visibility
We exist. Why does TV have such a problem with acknowledging that?
Gay Men Representation
Why does greedy, mean, and narcissistic keep coming up on character development here?
Problematic Sequels
Coming 2 America. Wonder Woman 1984. Who gave these scenes the greenlight?
Abortion Visibility
Do they walk it like they talk it?
Hogging the Story
You don't have to take center stage to participate in the story you know.
Journalism
Humor Writing
