Allison Engel has been a newspaper reporter for the Des Moines Tribune, San Jose Mercury and Pacific News Service, a magazine columnist for Saveur and Renovation Style, and a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. She was the director of communications at the University of Southern California for five years, where she completed an MA in screenwriting. She is now the associate director of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at USC, and writes about arts at the university.
Earlier, living in Iowa, she was active in the Des Moines Playhouse, serving as president and head of play selection, and was a speechwriter and aide in the Office of the Governor and Lt. Governor.
She co-wrote "Food Finds: America’s Best Local Foods and the People Who Produce Them" with her twin sister, Margaret Engel, and helped turn the book into a show for Food Network, where it ran for seven years.
In 2010, she and Margaret wrote the play "Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins." It had its world premiere at Philadelphia Theatre Company, with Kathleen Turner in the title role, and it broke the theatre’s all-time box office record. The play went on to break various box office records at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, the Zach Theatre in Austin, Texas, Berkeley Rep and others. The play is still being produced regularly and has had about 30 productions to date around the country. "Red Hot Patriot" was published by Samuel French.
The Engel sisters’ second play, "Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End," had its world premiere at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., in October 2015, with Broadway director David Esbjornson directing, as part of the Women's Voices Theatre Festival.