David B. Holton
(as told by Dave)
I’m a writer, visual storyteller, creative producer, and director based in New Orleans. Over the years, that has meant publishing short fiction, writing scripts for screen and stage, analyzing screenplays for studios and talent agencies, acting on stage, helping produce filmed content that has reached millions of viewers, and working as a professional photographer.
Growing up on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, I fell in love with folklore traditions that mingle memory and mythology. My work often includes magical elements, draws on regional history and Southern Gothic themes, and comes back again and again to character: the identities people claim, the choices they make, and what happens when those things do not line up.
I am currently the 2026–27 Artist-in-Residence Playwright at New Marigny Theatre, where I am revising Bayou Breakdown, a full-length Southern Louisiana ensemble tragicomedy. I also recently completed White Fawn, an adult literary historical novel with folkloric and magical-realist elements set in 1864 eastern North Carolina, and I am currently submitting it to literary agents.
On paper, my path does zigzag a bit. I hold a Certificate in Producing for Film, Television & New Media from UCLA Extension, an MBA in Marketing and Entrepreneurship from UNC Kenan-Flagler, and a BS in Civil Engineering from NC State. I started my twenties working as a field engineer on bridges, finished them as a management consultant working on business strategy and logistics for Fortune 500 and DHL clients, and entered my thirties as a freelancer working across writing, film, theatre, and photography.
The different jobs taught me different parts of the same lesson. Creative work needs imagination, but it also needs people who can make a plan, manage the details, work through problems, and get the thing finished. I have worked as a producer, assistant director, production coordinator, script analyst, and photographer, both on set and behind the scenes. I have also worked in production offices, written branded-integration scripts, helped develop projects, and read screenplays for Amazon Studios and Resolution Talent Agency.
Fun fact: When I was learning to write fiction, I copied Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian word for word as an exercise. I also worked through Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, and Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate in Spanish, partly to see how the stories were built sentence by sentence and partly because I wanted to practice the language. I brought much the same persistence to film, theatre, and photography: master classes, workshops, sets, rehearsals, shoots, and a good amount of trial and error.
Selected Work
Writing, Theatre & Visual Storytelling
Fiction: My short story “The Lightning Jar” was published in Oyster River Pages as an Emerging Voice in Fiction. I recently completed White Fawn, an adult literary historical novel with folkloric and magical-realist elements set in Civil War-era eastern North Carolina, and I am currently seeking representation.
Playwriting: I am the 2026–27 Artist-in-Residence Playwright at New Marigny Theatre in New Orleans. During the residency, I am revising Bayou Breakdown, a full-length Southern Louisiana ensemble tragicomedy, through table reads, scene workshops, revision, and a public staged reading. My short play “Flautista” won STAAR Theatre’s 2026 New One-Act Play Contest.
Screenwriting: My feature screenplay Skin Deep placed as a semifinalist in the Atlanta Film Festival Screenplay Competition and as a quarterfinalist in BlueCat. My feature screenplay Dragon placed as a quarterfinalist in the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards, Scriptapalooza, and the Final Draft Big Break Contest.
Filmmaking: During the pandemic, I wrote, directed, acted in, and edited the no-budget mockumentary Some Sh-t. It won Best Mockumentary Microfilm at the Austin Comedy Film Festival, received an Outstanding Achievement Award from Berlin Flash Film Festival, and was an official selection at the New York Flash Film Festival.
Theatre: I performed as Captain Arthur Barlowe and served as Assistant Technical Director during the 84th season of The Lost Colony, America’s longest-running outdoor drama. I also played Sergeant Trotter in Theatre of Dare’s 2022 production of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap.
Photography: I photograph people and places: headshots, portraits, personal branding, behind-the-scenes work, events, and documentary projects. My fine-art photography has appeared during PhotoNOLA at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and at Boulier Gallery in New Orleans, and my documentary work has appeared in F-Stop Magazine.
Journalism and copywriting: I wrote features for Milepost Magazine and Outer Banks This Week, covering local culture, small businesses, destinations, and coastal life.
Production & Development Work
Film and digital production: I served as Production Coordinator on the feature film Doomsday Device for CineTel Films, later distributed by Lionsgate; Line Producer and 1st Assistant Director on the eight-episode web series Friendless Five for Fullscreen TV; Producer and Assistant Director on Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling, a 25-minute mockumentary with more than four million YouTube views; and Producer and Production Manager on the festival-exhibited 360-degree narrative film Vain.
Digital work: I produced eight long-form videos and associated short-form content for an 8M+ subscriber YouTube channel, writing branded-integration scripts, coordinating creator partnerships, and managing production logistics.
Music videos: I worked as 2nd Assistant Director on Ariana Grande’s “One Last Time,” helping manage background talent and crowd scenes.
Story analysis: For Amazon Studios and Resolution Talent Agency, I provided screenplay coverage and story notes, evaluating premise, structure, character, and writing quality. I also judged writing contests for Fresh Voices and The Tracking Board.
More Backstory
I grew up on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, surrounded by stories: ghost pirates, lost colonists, shipwrecks, hurricanes, and old family tales. My friends and I acted them out in the woods and on the sandbars. Fact and fantasy were never that far apart. On the Outer Banks, everyone knows that Blackbeard’s headless body swam around his ship three times… no, five times… no, seven times before it finally sank into the sound. It all depends on who you ask.
That love of story followed me into adulthood. Even while I worked toward my civil engineering degree at NC State, I hiked across campus to take creative writing classes for fun. At that point, I still treated writing like a side hobby, so my twenties followed a different track: field engineering, an MBA, and strategy and operations consulting. Those jobs taught me how to work with all kinds of people, manage complex projects, and look from “idea” to “finished” while figuring out how to cross the gaps in between.
Eventually, I got tired of pretending stories were something I only cared about on the side. I moved to Los Angeles and went to work in film and television. While I was there, I studied Producing for Film, Television & New Media at UCLA Extension, worked on productions of all sizes, and read scripts as a freelance analyst for clients including Amazon Studios and Resolution Talent Agency.
After a while, I wanted to create more of my own material, so I returned to the Outer Banks and focused on fiction, drama, photography, and film. I spent time digging into local history, culture, and my own past experiences, and eventually those threads came together in White Fawn.
In 2024, Emily and I drove across the country to look at cities where we might want to build a life. We spent time in Austin, New Orleans, Atlanta, Charleston, and Raleigh before returning to New Orleans in October to look for a place to live and see whether the city felt right. It did. We moved here in January 2025.
New Orleans feels like home now. The city lives and breathes culture, holds its history close, and makes room for people who take stories seriously. I traded a sandbar for a swamp and rural life for city living, but I still see a lot of common ground between the Outer Banks and New Orleans. Both places contain a trove of stories, which is probably why I love them both.
I have always been a traveler with an incurable case of wanderlust. I have spent extended time in New Zealand, China, South Korea, Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Germany, and other places along the way. Stories give me another way to travel, whether I am reading them, watching them, photographing them, or writing them. If I were starved of stories, I would surely perish.
I am a member of the Dramatists Guild and Professional Photographers of America. For portrait, personal-branding, event, and cultural photography, visit Dave Holton Photography. For literary representation, theatre, creative-producing work, or other projects and collaborations, please get in touch.