Biography
DEBORAH SALEM SMITH (she/her) is Trinity Repertory Company’s playwright-in-residence, and a Huntington Theatre Playwriting Fellow.
Her plays include Anna K., Faithful Cheaters, Love Alone, Some Things Are Private, and Boots on the Ground. She has received multiple commissions, and her writing has been developed at Fiasco Theater, Trinity Rep, Playmakers Repertory Company, and the Huntington Theatre Company. Her work is published by Dramatists Play Service.
Smith grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and graduated cum laude from Princeton University where she won the Francis LeMoyne Page Visual Arts Award, the Ward Poetry Prize for Superior Work in Poetry, and the Morris W. Croll Poetry Prize Honorable Mention. Smith went on to get her M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Michigan where her writing was recognized with a Hopwood Major Essay Award, a Roy W. Cowden Memorial Fellowship in Poetry, and a Colby Fellowship in Creative Writing. Her teaching was nominated for the Outstanding GSI Award and the David & Linda Moscow Prize for Excellence in Teaching. She also had poems published in the Berkeley Poetry Review.
She received an Emerging American Artist Fulbright for playwriting at the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s national theater. Other awards include an Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award, a Jane Chambers Playwriting Award Honorable Mention, Portland Stage’s Clauder Competition Award (RI Winner), and the Best New Work Motif Theater Award. She was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Drama and for the IRNE Award for Best New Play. Her work has been honored with an Andrew Mellon National Fellowship in the Humanities, a Bray Visiting Scholar/Creative Artist Fellowship, and a MacDowell Colony Residency.
She teaches playwriting in the Brown University/Trinity Rep M.F.A. Acting and Directing program. On windy days, if she opens her window, she can hear the ocean.