The Writers

Christine Enking and Mark Storry are the creative partners behind A Protocol for Grace.

A rain-slick modern city street at night viewed from above, glistening with reflections. Neon signs and traffic lights smear across the wet asphalt, but in one intersection the reflections bend subtly into a vast, luminous circle inscribed with barely-perceptible sigils, hinting at a metaphysical protocol hiding in plain sight. Nearby, the dark silhouette of a courthouse and a child-services building stand in sober contrast, their windows dim. The scene is lit by cinematic, high-contrast sodium and LED streetlights with a cool, desaturated palette punctuated by that strange, iridescent circle. Shot from a high, almost surveillance-like angle with a long lens that compresses distance, the mood is ominous yet orderly, suggesting unseen governance and moral stakes without revealing specific plot details.

ABOUT THE WRITERS

CHRISTINE ENKING

Writer / Co-Creator

Christine Enking brings two decades of crisis-intervention experience to A Protocol for Grace, including sixteen years in child protection and three years working with survivors of domestic violence and their children. Her work has also included teaching social work, sexual-assault advocacy, and training professionals and foster parents who serve children and families.

Her professional experience, together with questions rooted in her own childhood and her experience as a mother, became the foundation for A Protocol for Grace—first as a novel and now as a feature screenplay. At the heart of her writing is a question that has followed her throughout her life and work:

What do adults owe our children?

MARK STORRY

Writer / Co-Creator

Mark Storry brings more than four decades of experience working with adolescents and families to A Protocol for Grace. His professional life has included high-school English and Humanities teaching, chemical-dependency counseling, school-based prevention and alternative education, family education, and decades of work addressing alcohol and drug issues with young people, families, and professionals.

That work has given Mark an intimate understanding of the struggles individuals and families face, as well as an enduring respect for the ability of young people not merely to survive, but eventually to thrive. As co-author of the novel and co-writer of the feature screenplay, he brings that perspective to A Protocol for Grace and to its exploration of children, families, responsibility, and grace.

A CREATIVE PARTNERSHIP

Christine and Mark’s creative partnership began with a friendship that reaches back four decades.

They met in 1986 through Partners In Prevention, an outreach prevention program that became part of a turning point in Christine’s life. Years later, after earning her master’s degree and working in child protection, Christine began searching for a way to give something back. In 1999, she started writing the story that would become A Protocol for Grace, drawing from her own life, her education, and her professional experiences.

The characters and story were clear in her mind, but eventually Christine realized she did not want to complete the journey alone. She turned to her longtime friend Mark, a writer whose own life and professional experiences brought another perspective to the work. Together, they shaped the story into a novel about children, human struggle, responsibility, belief, and grace.

More than twenty-five years after Christine first sat down to write it, their collaboration continues. Together, they have adapted A Protocol for Grace into a feature screenplay, bringing a story born from their shared experiences into a new form while preserving the question at its heart:

What do adults owe our children?