Laura Todd Carns is a writer of fiction and nonfiction.
Her essays and journalism have been published in literary journals such as Electric Literature and Hobart, as well as news outlets such as The Washington Post and The Atavist Magazine. Her personal essays grapple with motherhood from a variety of angles, the turmoil of adolescence, and the power of art to shape our lives. As a freelance journalist, she is particularly interested in health/mental health, parenting/family, and history. She is hungry for projects that require deep archival research.
Her fiction has appeared in journals such as Pigeon Pages, the Baltimore Review, and CHEAP POP. Much of her work is preoccupied with the very young, the very old, and those whose experiences are too often overlooked. She has written two as-yet-unpublished novels and is at work on a third.
Her short story “Herself” was selected as an Honorable Mention in Writer’s Digest’s 2018 Popular Fiction Contest (Young Adult category), and Pigeon Pages selected her story “The Balance” as one of its Best of the Nest for 2018. Her short story “Exah” was longlisted for the 2020 Historical Writers’ Association Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition. Her essay “The Midnight Panini King” was awarded an honorable mention in the 2021 Medium Writers Challenge.
Raised in Washington, DC and Gaborone, Botswana, she now lives near Annapolis, Maryland with her children and too many pets.
