Kirsten Smith

Kirsten M. "Kiwi" Smith (born August 12, 1970) is an American screenwriter and novelist whose credits include Legally Blonde and Ella Enchanted. She has written most of her screenplays with her screenwriter partner Karen McCullah. Early life Kirsten M. Smith was born, 12 August 1970, in Contra Costa County, California and grew up in San Pedro, Los Angeles, on a sailboat, without TV, and spent much of her childhood writing. After her family moved to Port Ludlow, Washington, she worked as a clerk at a video store before moving to Los Angeles in 1988 to attend Occidental College, studying English and Film, and getting a degree in 1992, then attended NYU's film program. While in college, she often submitted poems to local magazines, and after graduation, she received a scholarship to attend the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont and was a resident writer at MacDowell, after which she realized she could only advance her poetry career by getting a MFA and going into academia. She then decided to screenwrite for a living to support her poetry. Career While in college, Smith got an internship at CineTel Films, an independent film company; after she began working for CineTel reading scripts and writing coverage for them. This led to a full-time job there as a Director of Development in 1995, and then she began pursuing screenwriting in earnest. One of the scripts she happened to read and cover was written by Karen McCullah, an aspiring writer living in Denver, Colorado. The two women formed a friendship over the phone, and when McCullah came to Los Angeles, they met in person, and began writing their first script on cocktail napkins that night. That script never sold, but it inspired the women to write together again, and they embarked on a teen comedy called 10 Things I Hate About You, a twist on William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew partially inspired by the recent teen comedy Clueless.