Hi. I’m Laurie. I’m an author, a journalist and a screenwriter. I’m interested in stories, systems, sex, social justice, gender, games, economics, neurodiversity, language, power, political technology and cultural evolution. I’m told I’m provocative. I don’t do it on purpose. Here’s the breakdown:

Journalism:

I’ve been a political reporter since 2009, and when I was 22 someone decided it would be a good idea to nominate my shouty baby punk nerd feminist blog  “Penny Red’ for the Orwell Prize for political writing, at which point I became truly unbearable. I compensated for this by working monstrously hard writing about things that seemed to matter. I followed youth protest movements across several hemispheres reporting on gender, culture and technology as a columnist and commentator for The New Statesman, The Independent, The Guardian and other outlets. I’ve been a regular contributor to Wired, GQ, Pacific Standard,  Long Reads and The Baffler, and along the way my features, essays and columns have picked up multiple awards. In 2015, I was a journalism fellow at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard university. 

I’ve published two essay collections and several long-form books of political analysis. My non-fiction books have a small cult following in the US, UK and Australia and are also, for some reason, madly popular in Germany. No, I don’t know why. I can’t even get arrested in France.

Screenwriting:

When the opportunity came up to to interview for a job in a Hollywood writers’ room, I was on a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean, in the dark, surrounded by drunken tech gurus dressed as actual pirates and drunker Belarusian mobsters fronting as tech gurus. In the circumstances, screenwriting sounded like a relaxing change of pace, so I climbed to the top deck in search of enough signal to fire off a sample. I turned out to be pretty good at translating complex issues into compelling narratives, and in the six years since, I’ve worked as a writer-producer on multiple hit shows.  I’ve sold pilots to major networks, and I’ve currently got several projects in development; I also work as a script doctor and dialogue consultant. My credits include ‘The Nevers’, ‘Carnival Row,’ ‘My Lady Jane’ and ’The Haunting of Bly Manor.’ 

Fiction:

My short fiction has been featured by Tor.com, Mothership, BBC Radio 4 and many other outlets, and my novella ‘Everything Belongs To The Future’ was published in 2017. I’m a graduate of the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop, where I have also taught a novella course. I’ve been nominated for the Campbell Award for Emerging Writers, and I’m currently working on my first full-length novel. 

Game design:

I design immersive games, tabletop RPGs and blackbox scenarios, because I’m the sort of hopeless dork who’s heavily into larp. Specifically, I’m into Nordic-style live-action roleplaying, which means I get to be a pretentious art wanker AND a massive nerd at the same time. My games have been showcased at international festivals, and I’m part of the writing and design team for Gothic, by Avalon larp studios. I’m currently looking for more collaborators and new projects in the TTRPG, immersive and narrative design space. 

That sounds like a lot:

I’m a precarious millenial working in the arts. I’m quite tired.