Karyn Peyton

Karyn is a bisexual poet, playwright, and screenwriter who believes that truth carries narrative momentum. Her work interrogates personal and institutional histories, often intersecting medicine, education, media, and power, with a focus on amplifying voices that have been marginalized or misrepresented.

A first-generation college graduate and Odyssey Scholar, Karyn studied at the University of Chicago and Oxford. While still a student, she directed a guerrilla-style documentary short examining involuntary student commitments to a private psychiatric facility, including her own—work that ultimately contributed to the dissolution of her university’s relationship with that institution.

Karyn has worked across production, development, and support roles for projects at AMC, Showtime, Netflix, and NBCUniversal. As an IAMA Theatre Under 30 playwright, her recent play was presented at Atwater Village Theatre with Ashley Clements and Jocelyn Shek. She has also contributed to independent documentary series exploring wrongful convictions and mental health courts.

Internationally engaged, she was invited by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts, the City of Paris, and the Paris University Club to present poetry on air for the finale of the Paris Olympics.

Inspired by filmmakers such as Agnès Varda, Chloé Zhao, Diablo Cody, Ana Lily Amirpour, and the Wachowskis, Karyn gravitates toward hybrid forms—cinéma vérité, verbatim theatre, speculative science fiction.

She is not on socials.