Carissa Jean Mares

Carissa Jean is a screenwriter, sensitive poet, and maker of zines. With a talent for getting to the bottom of what scares her, she writes with a profound and often brutal honesty. She is a graduate from the IPRC with work appearing in Devastation Baby, West Trade Review, and Girls Like Us. She was proudly a Willamette Writers FilmLab 2024 cohort and is hoping to direct her first film soon.

Her feature script THIS GODLY SORROW placed in the quarterfinals of the Hot Springs Screenwriting Competition, 2022. It also was a semifinalist for the Vancouver International Women in Film Festival, 2023. Most recently, she was a semifinalist for the Stowe Story Labs & NYX Horror Collective Fellowship, 2024. PURGING DEMONS, another feature script of hers, was an official quarterfinalist for the Page Turner Screenplay Competition - Genre division 2023.

You can find her avoiding writing by walking around as many neighborhoods within Portland as she possibly can.