Beverly Smith-Dawson
Affiliated Writer
Phoenix, AZ
Biography

Beverly Smith-Dawson is a writer of screenplays, stage plays, and short stories. Her short story "Chosen" won in the Writers Digest Magazine's Sci-Fi/Fantasy category of the 2008 Annual Popular Fiction Awards.

Most recently, her short screenplay "Retirement" was a top-ten Finalist for the 2017 Cinequest Film Festival, and her screenply Mad Dog Run was accepted to the 2016 Oaxaca Film Festival, a Finalist in the 2010 Contest of Contest Winners Screenwriting Competition, and a Semi-Finalist in both the 2008 Organization of Black Screenwriters (OBS) International Screenwriting Competition and the 2009 Hollywood Black Film Festival.

Additionally, her short stage play Indebted was part of the 2012 Pandora Festival in Scottsdale, AZ; her short stage play One Summer was one of six Finalists in the Arizona Centennial Playwriting Contest chosen for production in October 2011; her screenplay Wild Horse Woman was a Finalist in the feature screenplay category of the 2011 Moondance Film Festival; and her stage play On the Wings of the Hummingbird won in the Stage Play category of the 2010 Moondance Film Festival.

She writes in a variety of genres, and has has stage plays produced in San Francisco, New York City (including off-Broadway), Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Minneapolis (including the Minneapolis Children's Theatre). Additionally, her script House of Mirrors won the 2006 Pen and Brush Playwriting Competition in NYC. And her screenplays have been Finalists and Semi-Finalists at the Sundance Lab, The AFI Women in Directing Program, The Moondance Film Festival, and the Chesterfield Productions Writers Project.

Beverly has an MFA in Directing from the Yale School of Drama, and completed the UCLA Extension Certificate Program in Screenwriting in September 2008.

Currently, she teaches storytelling and screenwriting at Estrella Mountain Community College in Avondale, AZ, receiving an Outstanding Adjunct Award in 2017.

She recently completed her fist book 3 by One, three novellas of speculative fiction.