As a writer and performer, Carolyn Benjamin strives to enlighten and excite her audience by exposing social injustices and environmental abuses. She takes actual occurrences and thrusts them into an original creative work. While her work takes multiple forms – paper, stage, video, song – she creates to inspire others like her:
Those fed up with the atrocities and abuses of humanity.
Those disgusted by the constant belittlement of the human condition.
Those desiring a planet on which each future generation can thrive.
While much of her work confronts human and environmental struggle, she writes with a voice of hope and even manages to find the humor in the most bleak of situations.
Born and raised on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Carolyn studied theater at The University of Southern Mississippi and relocated to Chicago upon graduating. She become an ensemble member of the Trap Door Theatre and performed in numerous productions. Her work in the one-woman-show Request Programme earned her NEWCITY magazine’s 2004 Top Female Performance award. During her time at Trap Door, she met director and performance artist Catherine Sullivan and composer and director Sean Griffin. Through collaborations with both these artists, Carolyn traveled the world, met with artists across the globe, and thrived off of the realization that universal truths and wants make us all human and all worthy of an empathetic consideration before generalization and condemnation.
Carolyn recently received her MA in English and Creative Writing (emphasis: Screenwriting) and her MFA in Creative Writing (emphasis: Fiction Writing) from Southern New Hampshire University. Her first screenplay, The Lunatic, placed in the semi-finals in the 2020 New York International Screenplay Awards, and her debut novel, The Outrageous, will be released this Spring 2026.
Carolyn has written several plays and pieces with her husband, Sean Benjamin, and they are the proud parents to Lily, Jack, Hilah, Ramsay, and Elwin.