Mona Z. Smith is a playwright, screenwriter, published nonfiction author, and a former newspaper reporter.

Smith's full-length plays have been produced in the US and Europe. Her newest work is SIGHTINGS, a suspenseful coming-of-age play set against a backdrop of social change and unexplained phenomena in the Hudson Valley in the 1980s. SIGHTINGS will have its first reading for an invited audience in October 2022 at the Paramount Theater, where Smith is an artist-in-residence. It was commissioned by Paramount Hudson Valley Arts and the Paramount Theater, with support from the NY State Council on the Arts.

Smith frequently co-creates work with the writer and director Traci Mariano. Their recent works include NORTHERN LIGHTS, a new urban holiday play about hot cocoa, magic, and family that was inspired by classic wintry fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen, which had a limited run as a radio play with live sounds effects at the Paramount Theater in December 2021. Smith and Mariano also co created FIRE IN A DARK HOUSE, a family drama set against a backdrop of anti-immigrant fervor during WWI; it was read at the Paramount Theater in 2019 and had a workshop production at the Whitefire Theatre (L.A.) in 2018.

Smith's other plays include BORDERLANDS, a meditation on women, war, and genocide, which won the national Berilla Kerr prize and was produced in New York City, Los Angeles, and VA. The play was later revived by the Orange Tea Theatre (Amsterdam) to benefit women refugees from war-torn countries including Syria. Her play ALL THAT REMAINS was workshopped in Los Angeles and then staged in Honolulu, Hawai'i, where it won the Hawai'i State Theater Association award for Best Play. In THE NATIVE SON PROJECT, a theater company invites a VIP audience to the dress rehearsal of their revival of "Native Son" and the gala evening erupts in conflict. This meta-theatrical event was commissioned by, and workshopped at, the Paramount Theater (Peekskill) with NYC's Esperance Theatre Company (dir. Ryan Quinn).

CANADA LEE (a screenplay, co-written with Traci Mariano) and BECOMING SOMETHING (a stage play, by Smith) are both adapted from Smith's book "Becoming Something" (Faber & Faber, 2004), a critically acclaimed social biography of Canada Lee. A pioneering black actor and civil rights activist, Lee was branded a traitor and a Communist in the 1950s, blacklisted, and then virtually erased from U.S. history. Lee's untimely death in 1952 at age 45 is one of a handful directly attributed to the Red Scare.

Smith also writes plays and literary adaptations for young audiences. Between 2015 and 2018, Smith was commissioned by the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (New York) to adapt Shakespeare plays and literary classics for young audiences. Her TYA plays commissioned by the Festival include COMEDY OF ERRORS, THE SWORD IN THE STONE, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, and THE TEMPEST. All of these plays toured performing arts centers, schools, hospitals, libraries, and other community venues throughout the tristate area of NY-NJ-CT. The Festival also commissioned Smith to create NORTHERN LIGHTS (see above).