Carlin M. Wragg

Carlin M. Wragg is a Writer and Experience Designer with expertise in content development, storytelling, and social media. As a matriculating graduate student in New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) and Editor of Open Loop Press, she uses writing and interactive technology to create new ways to experience literature and culture. Current projects include Storywalks at Eldridge Street for the Museum at Eldridge Street, Volumes of Voices for the New York Public Library, and Found Letters: Jack & Matilda.

Carlin’s writing practice encompasses poetry and prose, archival investigation, responsive soundscapes, and interactive, locative and social media. She uses these to translate history into fiction that reveals the trace of ordinary lives. With characters and details gleaned from archival research, she transforms forgotten stories into multisensory reading experiences. Currently at work on her first novel, Found Letters: Jack & Matilda begins in the gallery and extends to the page, using storytelling to enliven concordant poetic rhythms that trigger the instinctive human response to beauty.

In her professional career, Carlin unites passion for writing with commitment to service. In 2008, she co-founded Open Loop Press to serve writers and their readers. Through in-depth interviews, podcasts, and social media, Open Loop Press delves into writers’ influences and insights, explores how technology shapes creative practice, and documents the literary arts in the context of culture at large.

From 2002 to 2010, Carlin directed the Axe-Houghton Multimedia Archive at Poets House, where she helped design the AV/IT infrastructure for the arts organization’s 11,000-square-foot literary center in Lower Manhattan. There, she spearheaded social media outreach strategy and led an initiative to digitize thousands of poetry-related sound, video and multimedia objects dating back to the mid-1960s.

In 2011, Carlin joined the award-winning media design firm Local Projects to help launch Change by Us, a multi-city social platform for civic engagement. In collaboration with the Studio Director and Director of Film and Video Content, she developed content for mobile exhibits and large-scale environmental interactives at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, the Eisenhower Memorial, and Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture.

Carlin has been working on behalf of literature and culture for more than a decade. She helped found the Scribes Summer Creative Writing Camp, an intensive two-week program for young people at Richard Hugo House in Seattle. At Poets & Writers, her administrative work with the Readings/Workshops Program supported the distribution of small grants to community-based organizations throughout New York State. She has served as Poetry Reader for Small Spiral Notebook, and holds the position of Managing Editor of Campbell Corner, where she administers the Campbell Corner Poetry Contest.

Carlin holds a Bachelor of Arts with concentrations in Literature and Philosophy from Sarah Lawrence College. Her writing has been featured in Open City’s “Debut Writers” reading series at the KGB Bar in Manhattan, and most recently, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts.