Alena Smith

Creator, Showrunner, Executive Producer, Dickinson | The Writers Panel with Ben Blacker

Alena Smith is a playwright and TV writer. She is the creator, showrunner and executive producer of the critically-acclaimed series “Dickinson” starring Hailee Steinfeld as Emily Dickinson, which debuted on Apple TV+ on November 1, 2019, and recently wrapped production on its second season. The series was nominated in its first season for a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comedy series.

Named one of Variety’s TV Scribes to Watch, Smith previously served as a writer and producer for Showtime's “The Affair,” and wrote for HBO's “The Newsroom.”

Her most recent play, “Icebergs,” had its world premiere in 2016 at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. Other published plays include “The Bad Guys,” “Plucker,” “The Lacy Project,” and “The New Sincerity,” which The New York Times called “Splendid... entertaining and thought-provoking... comedy with a poignant edge.”

Smith created the Twitter character @TweenHobo (featured in Paste, A.V. Club, and elsewhere); Tween Hobo: Off the Rails, her novel based on the account, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2014. Her essays about writing for theater, TV, and the internet have been published in Grantland and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Smith received her MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama and studied philosophy at Haverford College and the University of Oxford.