Carolyn Wall photo

Carolyn Wall

Carolyn D. Wall is the author of the novel Sweeping Up Glass (Poisoned Pen Press; available in bookstores August, 2008). Her short stories, articles and photographs have appeared in over 100 publications. For many years she worked as Senior Staff Writer for Persimmon Hill, the award-winning publication of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and was chief writer for the museum’s children’s magazine. For six years she served as Fiction Editor and columnist for ByLine magazine.

A full-time freelance writer and lecturer on university campuses and in conference centers around the country, Wall conducts intense workshops in Fiction, Short Story and Feature Writing, Journaling, and Writing for Children. She is perhaps best known for her six-week classes: "How To Write What You Feel", and for motivating writers everywhere.

As an Artist-in-Residence for the Oklahoma Arts Council, she has taught creative writing to 4,000 children in her home state and now runs a freelance editorial service. Through her company, The Write Page, she has established a prison-writer mentoring program, working with incarcerated men and women in Alabama, Kansas, Michigan and Texas.

In 1995, she wrote for and edited the book Braced Against The Wind, the only literary history of the bombing of Oklahoma City. In the fall of 1998, she wrote, produced and recorded The Journaling Tapes: Writing From The Heart, a six-week’ course in daily journaling. She has done voice-over work for radio and television.

The Department of the Interior and Wyoming's Bearlodge Writers presented her with a writing residency at Devils Tower, Wyoming in 1998. The recipient of regional and national honors, she is the only writer to have the distinction of receiving the regional Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc.'s coveted crème-de-la-crème award twice. She lives in Oklahoma City and has completed her second novel, The Coffin Maker, available soon, also through Poisoned Pen Press.


“Surviving is a basic thing. Getting by. Staying alive in whatever way we can. It doesn't mean we make right choices or drive fine cars or have good jobs. It means we found a way not to die. I survived.”
Carolyn Wall
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“There is no such thing as always doing our best. How utterly exhausting that would be. We just do what we do. And maybe it's enough.”
Carolyn Wall
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“Everything that comes by you has your name on it.”
Carolyn Wall
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