Overview
With a priest for a father and a magician for a mother, Emily Sayre Smith was always going to have an interesting life - for better and for worse. Here, she recounts what it was like coming of age in Texas and Arizona in the '50s, '60s, and '70s in a decidedly dysfunctional family. To escape her turbulent family life, Emily throws herself into her ballet classes, where she can dance out the anxiety in her body and take refuge in fantasy worlds. Driven by the dream of being a ballerina, she earns scholarships and lead roles, studies in London for two years, and eventually lands back in Tucson, where she joins a fledgling ballet company and falls in love - with a woman and with marijuana. Join Emily as she survives her troubled family, hangs out with dance royalty, saves Martha Graham, meets the Queen of England, slings hash in a diner, discovers her sexuality, and tries to figure out how it's all going fit together in her ballerina world in this story of a brave and sometimes bumbling girl charging her way through life.
Full Product Details
Author: Emily Sayre Smith
Publisher: She Writes Press
Imprint: She Writes Press
Weight: 0.210kg
ISBN: 9781647429829
ISBN 10: 164742982
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 07 October 2025
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.
Reviews
"". . . a rousing memoir of a brash young ballerina from a dysfunctional family who achieves her greatest dream only to realize--as she begins to find success--that she's gay.""--Readers' Favorite, 5-star review ""Emily Smith is Judy Blume for adults. Smartass bypasses the page and takes you straight into her brain. There's a lesson here in realizing we can look, but unless someone lets us, we will not see.""--Lisa Schnebly Heidinger, journalist and author of The Journal of Sedona Schnebly
""Emily Smith is Judy Blume for adults. Smartass bypasses the page and takes you straight into her brain. There's a lesson here in realizing we can look, but unless someone lets us, we will not see.""--Lisa Schnebly Heidinger, journalist and author of The Journal of Sedona Schnebly
Author Information
Emily Sayre Smith grew up in Texas and Arizona and subsequently spent two years in London and twenty years in NYC and LA. She started life as a classically trained ballet dancer, but after being forced out of that world due to drug addiction, she fell into owning a gym. She stayed in the gym space for fifteen years. After getting sober, she spent another twenty years working in high-end commercial tenant improvement construction before deciding to start writing again. Smartass is her first book. Emily currently lives in Palm Springs, CA.
