About Jessy

Jessy Lauren Smith is a writer who lives in LA but currently spends an awful lot of time in a small town in Oklahoma, which is a great way to feel like you've slipped timestreams every time you get off a plane.

She has been an artist-in-residence with the Ragdale Foundation and internationally renowned artists' group Blast Theory, and a finalist or semifinalist for honors including the Eugene O’Neill Playwriting Conference, the WeScreenplay Diverse Voices Screenwriting Lab, the ScreenCraft Screenwriting Fellowship, the Scriptapalooza TV Writing Competition, the Table Read My Screenplay Genre Competition, and The Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program.

She has taught playwriting and screenwriting in places like Chicago Public Schools, Danville Correctional Center, and Northwestern University, and has told stories with 2nd Story, That Maxwell Bitch, Wild & Sublime, This Much Is True, and giftLIT.

Jessy is a founding member of Living Room Playmakers, a playwright-driven collective that writes plays for unusual spaces, and a co-creator of The Advent Project, a multimedia, online calendar that features the original work of 24 different artists in support of a worthy cause each December.

She holds an MFA from Northwestern University, in the palm of her hand, for an hour each day.

You can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @jessylaursmith.