[2] She graduated from Marshalltown High School in 1938, where she was elected wittiest student, and Grinnell College in 1942.

She moved to New York City in 1943, where she held a number of jobs including freelance journalism and advertising.

[6] Carlson wrote to Wright after its publication "I reflected today how you were the first one in my whole life who told me sincerely that I could write".

Other short stories include a humorous series about Dr. Aesop Abercrombie in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (1953-1954) and "Room With a View" in Fantastic (1953).

She was instrumental in the preservation of Navesink Twin Lights and founded the Underwater Naturalist, the journal of the American Littoral Society.