Jane Espenson
Espenson in May 2013
Born	(1964-07-14)July 14, 1964 (age 61) Ames, Iowa, U.S.[1]
Occupation(s)	Television producer & writer
Years active	1994–present
Website	http://www.janeespenson.com/

Jane Espenson (born July 14, 1964) is an American television writer and producer.

Espenson has worked on bothsituation comedies andserial dramas. She had a five-year stint as a writer and producer onBuffy the Vampire Slayer and shared aHugo Award withDrew Goddard for her writing on the episode "Conversations with Dead People".

After her work onBuffy, she wrote and produced episodes ofThe O.C. andGilmore Girls among other series. From 2006 to 2010, she worked onBattlestar Galactica and several projects related to it. Between 2009 and 2010, she served onCaprica, as co-executive and executive producer and co-showrunner. In 2010, she wrote an episode ofHBO'sGame of Thrones, eventually earning a Writers' Guild Award for her involvement with the show. In 2011 she joined the writing staff forthe fourth season of the British television programTorchwood, which aired onBBC One in the United Kingdom andStarz in the United States during mid-2011.

From 2011 to 2018, Espenson worked as a consulting producer and co-executive producer on ABC's seriesOnce Upon a Time, and also wrote and directed some of the show's supplementary DVD content and helped develop the show's spin-off series. She co-wrote and producedHusbands, an independent original web series, with co-creatorBrad Bell. She and Bell were nominated for a Writers' Guild Award for their work on the series. Espenson also contributed writing to seasons 1 and 3 of the Marvel seriesJessica Jones, and was an executive producer of the HBO seriesThe Nevers.

She is a writer and executive producer on theApple TV+ seriesFoundation.

She has written numerous comic books, edited multiple volumes of essays, and published several short stories.

Espenson grew up inAmes, Iowa, and graduated from Ames High School.^[2] As a teenager, Espenson found out thatM*A*S*H acceptedspec scripts without requiring the writer to have industry representation. Though she was not an established writer, she attempted to write a script. She recalls, "It was a disaster. I never sent it. I didn't know the correct format. I didn't know the address of where to send it, and then I thought, they can't really hire me until I finish junior high anyway."^[1]

Espenson studiedlinguistics as an undergraduate and graduate atUniversity of California, Berkeley.^[2] She worked as acognitive linguistics research assistant forGeorge Lakoff,^[3] who acknowledged her work on the metaphorical understanding of event structure in English and credited her with recognizing the existence of the phenomenon of location-object duality in metaphors pairs.^[4] Lakoff also mentioned her year-long work on the "metaphorical structure of causation" in theacknowledgments section ofPhilosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (1999,ISBN 0-465-05674-1).

While in graduate school, she submitted several spec scripts forStar Trek: The Next Generation as part of a script submission program open to amateur writers; Espenson has referred to the program as the "last open door of show business".^[2]

In 1992, Espenson won a spot in the Disney Writing Fellowship,^[1] which led to work on a number of sitcoms, including ABC's comedyDinosaurs andTouchstone Television's short-livedMonty. This was followed by work on the short-lived sitcomsMe and the Boys, andSomething So Right. In 1997 she joined the writing staff of Ellen Degeneres's sitcomEllen.^[1]

After years in sitcoms, Espenson decided to switch from comedic to dramatic writing and submitted her sample scripts toBuffy the Vampire Slayer.^[5]

In 1998, Espenson joinedMutant Enemy Productions as executive story editor for thethird season ofBuffy the Vampire Slayer. Over the rest of the run of the series, Espenson wrote or co-wrote twenty-three episodes, starting with "Band Candy" and ending withBuffy's penultimate episode, "End of Days". After her role as an executive story editor, she was promoted to co-producer inseason four. In thefifth season she was promoted again to producer. She took up the role of supervising producer in thesixth season and was promoted once more to co-executive producer in thefinal season.

She wrote episodes both humorous (e.g. "Triangle" and "Intervention") and serious (such as "After Life"). Espenson andDrew Goddard co-wrote the seventh-season episode "Conversations with Dead People," for which they won theHugo Award forBest Short Dramatic Presentation in 2003.^[6]

Espenson is credited as the writer or co-writer of the followingBuffy episodes:

She also co-/wrote several comic book stories forTales of the Slayers,Tales of the Vampires andBuffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, theone-shotsJonathan andReunion and thelimited seriesHaunted.

Espenson joined the crew ofSci Fi'sBattlestar Galactica (BSG) just afterBattlestar Galactica: Razor, BSG's firsttelevision movie, was conceived.^[7] As one of BSG's co-executive producers, she worked on every fourth-season episode starting with "He That Believeth in Me"; she was also the writer of "Escape Velocity" and "The Hub" and co-wroteThe Face of the Enemy webisodes. Prior to joining the show's staff she wroteone third-season episode andco-wrote another. In August 2008, theLos Angeles Times broke the news that Espenson was the writer behind BSG's second television movie,The Plan,^[8] news confirmed in her writer's blog.^[9] In January 2009 it was announced that she had joined the spin-off seriesCaprica as co-executive producer and would take on showrunner duties midway through the first season.^[10] Espenson later gave up showrunning duties to focus more on writing.^[11]

In August 2010 it was announced thatTorchwood creator, lead writer and executive producerRussell T. Davies had hired Espenson to write for the show's fourth series,Torchwood: Miracle Day to be broadcast in 2011.^[12] She later confirmed that she would be writing episodes 3, 5, 7 and co-writing episode 8 (with Ryan Scott)^[13] and episode 10 (with Davies).^[14] Prior to her involvement with Torchwood, Espenson had said she was a fan of the show, particularly the third series, "Children of Earth."^[15] To tie in with the launch ofTorchwood: Miracle Day, Espenson and Scott collaborated on the Starz-produced 2011Torchwood webseries entitledTorchwood: Web of Lies, which stars American actressEliza Dushku.^[16] Following the broadcast of each episode of "Miracle Day" on Starz, Espenson wrote a blog onAfterElton mixing her reaction to the episode with behind the scenes information on the devising process.^[17]

In 2011 Espenson also co-wrote and produced her first independent web series with partner Brad Bell. EntitledHusbands, it revolved around the life of two newly married gay men. Espenson self-funded the first season. A Kickstarter campaign and the involvement ofCW Seed allowed subsequent production. The show eventually comprised four "seasons" and concluded in 2014.^[18] The series premiered Tuesday September 13, 2011. The series also generatedHusbands, a hardback comic-book collection of stories rendered in a variety of different drawing styles, from Dark Horse Comics (ISBN 9781616551308).

In May 2011, Espenson was brought on to theABCfantasy seriesOnce Upon a Time, as a writer and consulting producer.^[19] She stayed with the show for its entire seven-year run, and became a co-executive producer on the project. She was also involved in creation and writing of the spin-off seriesOnce Upon a Time in Wonderland.^[20]

In 2011, working as a freelancer, Espenson wrote episode 6 of season 1 ofGame of Thrones, titled "A Golden Crown". It is notable as one of only fourGame of Thrones episodes written by women.^[21]

In 2015, during the hiatus between seasons ofOnce Upon a Time, Espenson consulted on the seriesJessica Jones, earning a "thanks to" in the credits. In 2019, she returned for a larger role on the staff, and wrote the eleventh episode of the third season "A.K.A. Hellcat".

In 2018, Espenson joined theHBO seriesThe Nevers, as a writer and executive producer.^[22] The series premiered on April 11, 2021.^[23]

Espenson consulted on theApple TV+ seriesFoundation in season 1, joining the writing staff in season 2 with writing credits on half of the episodes.

Espenson has written episodes for several other television shows, including episode 4.17 ("Accession") ofStar Trek: Deep Space Nine, and one episode ("Shindig") ofFirefly. She has worked onAngel,Tru Calling,The Inside,The Batman,Andy Barker, P.I.,Jake in Progress andDollhouse, and was the co-creator ofWarehouse 13.^[24]

Espenson is the editor of the bookFinding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon's Firefly (BenBella Books, 2005,ISBN 1-933771-21-6), a collection of non-fiction essays on the short-lived television showFirefly. She edited the follow-up collectionSerenity Found: More Unauthorized Essays on Joss Whedon's Firefly Universe (BenBella Books, 2007,ISBN 9781933771212) She is the editor ofInside Joss' Dollhouse: From Alpha to Rossum (BenBella Books, 2010,ISBN 9781935251989), a similar collection of essays aboutDollhouse.

Espenson wrote the short story "What Holds Us Down", which appears inStill Flying from Titan Press,ISBN 1848565062. Her short story "Int. Wolf-Night" appears inEmpower: Fight Like a GirlISBN 9780692210116 She also has short stories which appear in theTales of the Slayers book series. Her short story, "Nobel Prize Speech Draft of Paul Winterhoeven, With Personal Notes", was published in the September 2021 issue ofFuture Science Fiction Digest.^[25]

In 2016, Espenson served on the MoPOP (Museum of Pop Culture, Seattle) committee to select inductees into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.^[26] She is featured as a video/voice commentator in the museum itself.

Espenson has written for three of the 101 Best Television Series as determined by the Writers Guild of America:Battlestar Galactica,Game of Thrones andBuffy the Vampire Slayer.^[27]

Espenson has appeared as an "expert witness" on theJudge John Hodgman podcast episodes "Science Friction"^[28] and "Vampirical Evidence."^[29] In 2012, Espenson was a guest on the interview seriesCocktails with Stan, with hosts Stan Lee and Jenna Busch. She has also been a guest onThe Sound of Young America, with Jesse Thorn.^[30] She has guested on theGilmore Guys podcast and on theSlayerfest podcast, aboutGilmore Girls andBuffy respectively.

She appears in the documentary interview seriesJames Cameron's Story of Science Fiction andShowrunners.

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• Jane Espenson atIMDb
• Jane Espenson Interview on AMC

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