Alex Smith received his M.F.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a Michener Fellow. He won River City's Fiction Contest in 1997 and Nimrod's Katherine Anne Porter Prize in 1995. He and his twin brother, Andrew, co-wrote the screenplay for The Slaughter Rule, which was a 1998 Sundance Lab Project, and which they will co-direct this winter. They are currently writing scripts for Columbia Pictures and HBO.