"Devastatingly witty." - Military.com 

"Funny, smart and real" - Dave Barry 

"Laugh-out-loud humor" - Florida Times Union


What the average human should know about me:

  1. I have three boys. They like to wrestle, bump heads, and eat dirt. Often, I let them.
  2. I have one husband. He took our kids to the wrong fast-food restaurant for their birthday party.
  3. When I was in elementary school I wrote** my first "book," a 5-page sequel to Gone With the Wind. I've been writing ever since.

**During this same time I also did alot of crying, especially when the elastic on my pantyhose broke and fell to my knees. This, and not my sequel to Gone With the Wind, should explain much more than you want to know.

If you must know more...

Navy wife Sarah Smiley is the author of Shore Duty, a syndicated newspaper column that reaches more than 2 million readers weekly, and of the memoir GOING OVERBOARD: The Misadventures of a Military Wife (Penguin/New American Library, 2005) and a collection of essays titled I'M JUST SAYING... (Ballinger, 2008).

Sarah has been featured in The New York Times Magazine ("Confessions of a Military Wife," November 6, 2005) and Newsweek, and on ABC's Nightline, CNN American Morning, CNN Sunday Morning, CBS The Early Show, Fox News Studio B, and MSNBC Live. 

Sarah's life rights were optioned by Kelsey Grammer's company, Grammnet, and Paramount Television. A half-hour sitcom based on her columns and book is now in development. Film and dramatic rights are represented by Shari Smiley (surprisingly, no relation) at Creative Artist Agency in Los Angeles, CA. Sarah's literary work is represented by Jenny Bent at Trident Media Group in New York.

Sarah's military writing embodies the non-traditional aspects of military wives and brings to life an area long avoided by others in the mil itary community: the pithy, humorous, and sometimes politically incorrect side.

Sarah has been a Navy dependent for more than 32 years. She is the daughter of Lindell Rutherford, a career Navy F-14 pilot, and spent most of her upbringing amid the aircraft carriers and Navy bases in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Military Wife interview in bonus section of Officer and a Gentleman

And yet Sarah might well be most known for her accounts of raising three boys (two of them with an affinity for Superman underpants and red capes), and living with a "highly-trained military pilot ready for combat," who for all his efforts, just can't keep himself (or his fear of baby dolls) out of her columns. 

Sarah Smiley has a B.S. in Education from Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. She is the mother of three youn

g boys -- Ford (9), Owen (7), and baby Lindell (3) -- and the wife of Navy flight instructor, Lt. Cmdr. Dustin Smiley. 

Watch Dustin and Sarah in a special interview on the bonus section of An Officer and a Gentleman DVD.


Get to Know Sarah Smiley

New York Times Feature

Questions and Answers

Why So Smiley? Blog

Erma Bombeck Interview