Alena Smith is a writer, director, and showrunner. She created the Peabody Award-winning series Dickinson on Apple TV. Currently, she is an Executive Producer on FX’s limited series Cry Wolf, and will write the upcoming Audrey Hepburn biopic from Imagine, starring Lily Collins. Costumes, props, and set pieces from the critically-acclaimed Dickinson are on permanent view at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA, and an archive of the show's creation is featured in the collection of Harvard's Houghton Library.

Previously, Smith served as writer and producer on Showtime’s The Affair and HBO’s The Newsroom. In addition to her writing for the screen, Smith's essays have been featured in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She studied playwriting at the Yale School of Drama; her plays have been produced around the world. Published plays include Icebergs, 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.”