Dale Smith (writer)

Paul Dale Smith
Paul Dale Smith, Stockport 2007
Born	Paul Dale Smith November 1976 (age 40) Leicester
Pen name	Dale Smith
Occupation	writer and playwright
Nationality	British
Genre	Doctor Who, Science fiction, Social realism
Website
www.dalesmithonline.com

Paul Dale Smith (born November 1976) is a writer and playwright from Leicester, England but currently living and working in Greater Manchester. He writes under the name Dale Smith, and has had previous works published and performed under the names Paul Smith and Paul D. Smith.

He is most well known for work on various Doctor Who spin-offs.

Smith was born in Leicester in 1976, and has been writing since the age of 8. In his youth, he worked as a youth worker at his school, receiving training on various aspects of the job including child abuse awareness. Early in his career, he wrote stage plays but has recently turned to writing prose as "it's still almost impossible to get anything actually produced".

He has stated that his ambition is to "be Ian Rankin, lock stock and house in Edinburgh. But I'll settle for just being able to keep writing and keep getting stuff seen by people". In his spare time he draws and creates digital pictures, and also plays the guitar.

Smith's first published work was a poem published in the Leicester Mercury about Native Americans. He was still a pupil at junior school at the time. By the time he had moved to secondary school, he had had several fan fiction short stories published in Cosmic Masque, the fiction magazine of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society and this encouraged him to submit two short stories to Marvel UK's Doctor Who Magazine. These were published in the Brief Encounters section, some of the last stories published before the feature was discontinued.

Whilst writing short stories, Smith was also studying at Soar Valley Community College, Leicester, where he developed a keen interest in the theatre. He joined Jez Simons' Haithi Productions youth theatre group where he appeared in Simons' and Joyti Patel's The Fire Dragon at the Phoenix Arts Centre alongside future ER cast member Parminder Nagra. He entered the Independent Radio Drama Productions (IRDP) Young Radio Playwright Competition 1994 with the play Hello?, after re-writing the ending at Simons' suggestion. He won the competition, and the radio play was broadcast on LBC and performed at the Cambridge Theatre, before transferring to the Old Red Lion Theatre for a four-week run.