Scott Bechtel Smith is an American author and screenwriter, who has published two novels, A Simple Plan and The Ruins. His screen adaptation of A Simple Plan earned him an Academy Award nomination. The screenplay won a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award and a National Board of Review Award. Smith was born in Summit, New Jersey in 1965 and moved to Toledo, Ohio as a child. After studying at Dartmouth College and graduating from Columbia University, he took up writing full-time. His second novel, The Ruins, was also adapted into a film, released on April 4, 2008. Stephen King called it "[t]he best horror novel of the new century." King had also called A Simple Plan "simply the best suspense novel of the year." 

July 13th, 1965 in Summit (Age 59)