Dallas Cowboy fans be warned: ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith has a memoir coming out next year.
13A, an imprint of Gallery Books, announced Tuesday that Smith’s Straight Shooter: A Memoir of Second Chances and First Takes is scheduled for release in January 2023. According to 13A, Smith will share stories about his early years growing up in New York City, his years in journalism and his long history of speaking his mind — to a blunder — about sports (the Cowboys are a popular target) and a variety of topics, including commenting on domestic violence that led to ESPN briefly suspending him in 2014.
“This book is a long time coming. Because of my privacy fixation regarding my personal life, it took a lot of time and a lot of urging from my loved ones to finally get me to do it,” Smith said in a statement.
“But as I once told my mother, ‘If I write a book, I’ll be damned if I back off. I’ll speak my truth, say what I have to say, just so everyone knows where I stand and why.’ I know I did that in this book. I finally had to do it. It was time.