Gail Parent (born 1940) is an
American television and
screenwriter,
television producer, and
author.
Parent's writing career began with a 1971 episode of
The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The following year her novel
Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York City, which chronicled its unattractive, overweight,
Jewish heroine's romantic misadventures in
Manhattan, became a best-seller that later served as the basis of a film starring
Jeannie Berlin. Although the
screenplay was adapted by someone else, she penned the scripts for
Barbra Streisand's
The Main Event (1979) and
Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004).
Parent co-wrote the book for the 1974 musical
Lorelei. It is her sole
Broadway credit.