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Born in Elizabethtown, PA, award-winning author Scott Bradley Smith has written more than 100 stories, plays, screenplays and poems. Growing up in a small town in Lancaster County gave Scott a unique perspective on rural life, but he also had frequent access to the arts and culture in the urban centers of Lancaster and Harrisburg, as well as Philadelphia and other Eastern cities.
Scott’s father, Dale, was a car salesman who took the ’60s ad campaign “See the USA in Your Chevrolet!” to heart. Pulling a travel trailer behind their van, Scott’s family (which included his mother Barb and his sister Kim) ventured to nearly every part of the country and into Canada and Mexico. It’s this early wanderlust that informed Scott’s adolescent magnum opus—a ten-chapter, twenty-page “novel” he wrote at age eleven detailing an arduous hike he and his cousin Brian took at Warren Dunes State Park along Lake Michigan. It was an instant success with family members.
In 1978, Scott enrolled at Penn State where he began to write in earnest. He went on to receive an MA in Fiction Writing and also taught English courses. Scott studied with Penn State professors Paul West, John Balaban, Robert C.S. Downs, and Tom Rogers, among others. From there, Scott moved on to The University of Arizona where he earned his MFA in Creative Writing and taught composition, literature and fiction writing courses. Tucson still retained a bit of the wild west then, and Scott enjoyed hiking in the rugged mountains, playing poker with buddies and dancing to reggae music at The Chicago Bar. His colleagues included David Foster Wallace, Antonya Nelson and Robert Boswell, and he studied with Jonathan Penner, Robert Houston, Elizabeth Evans, Charles C.E. Poverman and Ron Hansen.
Scott has held a number of corporate professional jobs that won’t be gotten into here except to say that, in addition to paying the bills, they have provided him with a richness of life experience, marketable skills and, most importantly, a cadre of lifelong friends.
Since 1990, Scott has made his home in Pittsburgh, PA, where he loves the post-industrial zeitgeist, the flourishing arts and literature scene, the gorgeous rivers and parks, the sports teams and the diverse ethnic neighborhoods. (Note: Scott is not a paid spokesperson for the Chamber of Commerce, though he would gladly become one.) His six plays were written and produced there, and he has written (and rewritten and rewritten) a screenplay with author Mike Murray. Scott now lives in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood with his wife, the writer Anita Kulina.
Scott is currently editor-in-chief of Brandt Street Press, and he provides freelance writing and editing services to a number of corporate clients. When he’s not doing that, he can be found playing drums or bass with his band, The Impositions, or critiquing stories for his writer’s workshop. Scott is working on a novel and a collection of stories.
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