Columnist, Author, Military Wife

Navy wife Sarah Smiley’s weekly column is syndicated to newspapers and magazines across the country. She has written three books and has been featured in The New York Times and Newsweek, and on Nightline, CNN, CBS, Fox News, and MSNBC.

Smiley on Family Life

“You can’t help but be moved”
– Carol Leifer, former writer for Seinfeld

Sarah is most known for her accounts of raising three boys and living with a “highly-trained pilot,” who, for all his efforts, just can’t keep himself (or his fear of baby dolls) out of her columns.

Older readers say Sarah’s columns about family life take them back to their own parenting years. Younger readers say they can’t help but nod in agreement as they read.

Lessons from the Dugout,” about Little League, has been reprinted more than any other column Sarah has written.

Smiley on Military Life

“…an Erma Bombeck for the military…”
- Publishers Weekly

Sarah has been a military dependent from the day she was born, and her military writing embodies the intimate, non-traditional aspects of military life.

Sarah brings to light an area long avoided by others in the military community: the pithy, humorous, and sometimes politically incorrect side.

Sarah has been writing about military life since 2002, and she is often credited with blazing the trail for contemporary military-spouse authors and writers.

“Sarah opened the door, and the rest [of the military-spouse writers] stepped through it.”
- MOAA Symposium Introduction