Carolyn Dunn

Carolyn M. Dunn, MFA, PhD., ‘s life as a storyteller encompasses both poetry and playwriting with works about family, grief, resilience, and the landscape in all genres and in between. In addition to the award-winning Outfoxing Coyote (That Painted Horse Press, 2002), her books include Through the Eye of the Deer (with Carol Zitzer-Comfort, Aunt Lute Books, 1999), Coyote Speaks (with Ari Berk, HN Abrams, 2008) Echolocation: Poems, Stories and Songs from Indian Country: L.A. (Fezziweg Press, 2013), The Stains of Burden and Dumb Luck (Mongrel Empire Press, 2017), a forthcoming collection of plays, The Frybread Queen, Soledad, and Three Sisters: Three Plays by Carolyn Dunn (edited and with an introduction by Sarah dAngelo, No Passport Press, 2024) and Decentered Playwriting, coedited with Leslie Hunter and Eric Micha Holmes, Routledge, 2023). Her plays The Frybread Queen, Ghost Dance, and Soledad have been developed and staged at Native Voices at the Autry, and her current works in progress are the pow wow comedy Chasing Tailfeathers, commissioned by Oklahoma Indigenous Theatre Company and Coyote Woman, a TYA play commission for Rising Youth Theatre in Phoenix. Stage acting credits include Desert Stories for Lost Girls, The Bingo Palace, Citizen , Neechie-itas, Sliver of a Full Moon, and the musicals Distant Thunder and Missing Peace. A Louisiana Acadian Creole, Dr. Dunn is a non-enrolled Freedman tribal descendant of three Oklahoma-based tribes; and is a Tunica/Choctaw-Biloxi and Atakapas-Ishak descendant and community member.
Dr. Dunn is a member of the Dramatists Guild and Actor’s Equity. She lives part-time in Los Angeles and part-time in Oklahoma with her family.