Alexander Gordon Smith (27 February 1979, Norwich, England) is an author of children and Young Adult fiction.

After he stopped being around his "friends", and these experiences, along with wondering what would have happened if he kept being around this group of people, are what partly inspired the Furnace series.

Between 2000 and 2003 he studied English literature at the University of East Anglia, where he set up a small poetry press called Egg Box Publishing.

[2] Egg Box published a number of new poets, including Richard Evans, Ramona Herdman and poetry collective Aisle16, and continues to add to its list of books.

[4] In Summer 2005, Smith and his nine-year-old brother Jamie Webb began writing The Inventors, a children's novel.