TELLER OF TALES CAROLYN SAUNDERS was swept away at birth to spend her first months of babyhood sleeping in a cardboard box in a cupboard somewhere near Nellis AFB in Nevada, while her fighter pilot father did fighter pilot things like saving the world and playing Dead Ants. Laying in that dark cupboard, listening to the gentle snores of her older siblings who got to sleep in the real bedroom, she had lots of time to reflect on her young life and decided she already had some pretty awesome stories to tell, if only she could learn how to talk. Life after that was an exciting whirlwind (note to the grammar police: she knows there is no such thing as a boring whirlwind) of new bases, new countries, and new cultures, as she followed her mum and dad to such exotic postings as Germany, France and Chatham, New Brunswick, popping into England often enough to remember some kind of roots and replenish her supply of sticky toffee pudding. She wrote her first novel at age 10, a self-illustrated, self-bound (staples!) tome called Copper, Dog of the North, that rocked the literary world at her elementary school. Heady with success and the joy of storytelling, she never looked back, eventually parlaying her talent into a career as a newspaper reporter before being seduced by movie magic.
CAROLYN'S WORK - WRITER - DIRECTOR -STORYTELLER Carolyn is the 2022 winner of the Writer's Guild of Canada's Sondra Kelly Award, and an Academy Nicholl Fellowship quarterfinalist in 2021. Her feature script Island West was selected for the 2020 Writers Lab, supported by Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Oprah Winfrey. Island West is also on Coverfly's Red List - in the top 1% of nearly 80,000 screenplays.
Twice shortlisted for the Sundance Development Track with series and feature projects, Carolyn writes across genres. She co-wrote Amazon's critically acclaimed series Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer, and is writing and directing a Cold War feature doc now in development with White Pine Pictures' Emmy-winning producer Peter Raymont, with support from the Canadian Media Fund. She story-edited the 2019 Richard Dreyfuss-starring Astronaut and wrote episodes of the Canadian Screen Award winning comedy webseries Tokens. Her co-written scifi thriller series pilot Invisible was a finalist at The Writers Lab UK 2021.
Carolyn's 2021 short On Island West won the Directors UK Challenge Alexa and is currently on the festival circuit. Her short Sundown about a mixed race soldier disconnected from his identity, debuted at the 2021 Carmarthen Bay Film Festival.
In 2017, Carolyn made her directorial debut with the microbudget feature psychological thriller The Wasting. It was released theatrically in Canada, won multiple fetival awards, and sold in six countries.
While her focus is on writing and directing feature films, Carolyn takes forays into television documentary, where she has written and/or creative produced series such as the Gemini-nominated Mighty Ships (Discovery), Yukon Gold (History), the long-running Ghostly Encounters, Outlaw Tech, Fatal Vows, and Discovery’s hit series Forensic Factor. She also has extensive experience developing doc series. The years spent pretending to love German food and trespassing in the potato fields of European farmers gave her an excellent story sense and a knack for finding the drama. Though her dark beginnings have caused her to favour comedy, Carolyn works in many genres and formats. She has story edited and consulted on countless feature scripts and documentaries, in addition to analysing scripts for 13 years for the Harold Greenberg Fund.
Bonus fact: Carolyn is a citizen of both the UK and Canada, and thus can write almost anywhere, including squished into a Ryanair seat, if the situation calls for it. Also, she is mad for dogs and ice cream.
WAGGER OF TAILS ENDZONE spent his first year of life being a puppy, possibly sleeping in a box, in all likelihood not anywhere near Nellis AFB. At the age of one he went to live with Carolyn, where he spent the next 13 years chasing sticks into the water, knocking things off the coffee table with his tail, patiently enduring psychotic cat attacks, immensely enjoying car rides and worming his way into her cold hard heart, until she felt compelled to name her company after him so he could live forever. Endzone's motto is "swim softly and carry a big stick."