About

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. Sometimes because I wanted to, sometimes because my dad would make me write a story before I could play Nintendo. He’d write down the first line of the story and tell me to finish it. I’d whine and beg and write about how mean he was. He didn’t care. In fact, it didn’t matter to him what I wrote as long as I kept writing. Usually, by the end of the page I was writing something I liked. Sometimes I’d even draw a picture to go with it. At six years old, I would have told you it was torture.

But it did get me writing.

In 2009, my husband, Ro suggested I start a blog for my stories. Pretty soon after that, my mom, Tracy Newman, came up with the idea of having people read my stories out loud. She’d been an improv teacher at The Groundlings Theater in Los Angeles for years. She told me, “I bet I know some people who will read anything.” And she did.

In 2014, my mom and I turned Charlotte’s Shorts into a live comedy show featuring actors reading these stories on stage. The show was performed at various theaters in Los Angeles, including The Groundlings. In January 2015, Charlotte’s Shorts was part of the San Francisco Sketch Fest at the Eureka Theatre. Past performers have included: Laraine Newman, Jordan Black, Lynne Marie Stewart, Tim Bagley, Mindy Sterling, Andrew Friedman, Bridget Sienna, Jeremy Rowley, Lisa Schurga, Jim Rash, Jillian Bell, Gary Anthony Williams, Daniele Gaither, Michael Hitchcock, Patrick Bristow and Jonathan Stark.