Quinn D. Eli

Melanie is haunted by a voice that won’t leave her head. Call it a ghost, a hallucination, or clear evidence of a mental collapse. Either way, it's a lingering reminder of a friend who was killed years ago; the friend was black, Melanie is white, and questions about why it happened – and who was to blame – come newly into focus when Melanie is drawn into a relationship that offers her a brighter future, but no clear escape from the past.

In a future full of mystery and magic, a Black musician and his wife fight to survive as a robotic presence—a chatty A.I.—takes up residence in their home, stirring up racial mischief, marital strife, and the irresistible pull of a world where technology (not music) is the food of love.

A real-life adventure is taking place inside Damascus Comics. But there are no superheroes around to save the store’s African-American proprietor, Ramir, after his oldest friend and only employee, a white woman named Beth, attracts the frenzied attention of protestors and reporters in a case caught live on video: spotting two white children traveling in a car with a black man, Beth becomes convinced the children are in danger and calls the police, setting off a series of events that threatens the store she runs with Ramir, jeopardizes their relationship, and demands in the end an enormous price for Living While Black.

In this surreal fable of art and race, an African-American playwright, an Asian-American hostess, and a hip-hop waiter try fending off ethnic stereotypes and fried appetizers at a ghost-filled Chinese restaurant.

A decade before Obama, in a forgotten Black neighborhood, Walter sits alone in his apartment, waiting for the worst. Years earlier, he and his ex, Dana, made a sex tape, and now the fact of its existence is putting Dana’s husband-to-be, Frank, over the edge. He bursts into the apartment one night, determined to confront Walter and destroy the tape. But Frank is white, Walter is black, and for what he cites as “historical reasons”—slavery, lynching, apartheid—Walter refuses to surrender anything to Frank, least of all a magnetic record of two Black bodies in love. By the time Dana arrives, the “worst” that Walter was expecting is already erupting in this comic fable about sex, race, and memory.

When two women of color audition for the role of Lady Macbeth in a “woke” production of the Scottish Play, color-blind casting gets a comic makeover, and forces a theater director to realize that any stale assumption about race can live forever—unless someone takes a dagger to its heart.

In the surfing paradise of Montauk, Long Island, Colleen is losing her mind, her memory, and her fashion sense—all at the same time! It has something to do with her ailing mother, an Alzheimer’s patient who often confuses her own life story with the plot of Breakfast at Tiffany's. Sudden bursts of forgetfulness lead Colleen to believe the disease will soon claim her as well, so she heads for the ocean—and is quickly swept under by forgotten desires and unexpected disasters. This comic fable charts the emotional distance between who we are and who we allow ourselves to become.