Sarah Smarsh

Magic City Books and Tulsa City-County Library are proud to welcome Sarah Smarsh back to Tulsa in celebration of her new collection of essays, Bone of the Bone: Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class on Wednesday September 25. This free event will take place at Martin Regional Library, 2601 S. Garnett Road in Tulsa, at 7pm.

Sarah Smarsh is the author of Heartland, a finalist for the National Book Award, and She Come By it Natural, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Sarah joined us virtually in 2020 to talk about She Come by it Natural and you can check out that conversation on our You Tube channel.

Now collected for the first time in one volume, Bone of the Bone deliver the brilliant and provocative essays that established National Book Award finalist Sarah Smarsh as one of the most important commentators on socioeconomic class in America. The collection features a previously unpublished essay and a new introduction.

Sarah will be joined in conversation by Magic City Books co-founder Jeff Martin. Sarah will sign copies of Bone of the Bone and previous books at the conclusion of the program.

Marcela Swenson, CEO of Tulsa Responds, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making a positive impact in the lives of low-income families by providing comprehensive enrollment services for key government benefits, will be at the event sharing information about the work they are doing in our community.

Bone of the Bone will be published by Scribner Book Company on September 10. You can purchase a copy of the book at the store, at the event or online at: https://magiccitybooks.square.site/product/bone-of-the-bone/2470. Books purchased online before the event will be signed and available for pickup or shipping after the event.

About Bone of the Bone

In Bone of the Bone, Sarah Smarsh brings her graceful storytelling and incisive critique to the challenges that define our times–class division, political fissures, gender inequality, environmental crisis, media bias, the rural-urban gulf. Smarsh, a journalist who grew up on a wheat farm in Kansas and was the first in her family to graduate from college, has long focused on cultural dissonance that many in her industry neglected until recently. Now, this thought-provoking collection of more than thirty of her highly relevant, previously published essays from the past decade (2013-2024)–ranging from personal narratives to news commentary–demonstrates a life and a career steeped in the issues that affect our collective future.

Compiling Smarsh’s reportage and more poetic reflections, Bone of the Bone is a singular work covering one of the most tumultuous decades in civic life. Timely, filled with perspective-shifting observations, and a pleasure to read, Sarah Smarsh’s essays–on topics as varied as the socioeconomic significance of dentistry, laws criminalizing poverty, fallacies of the “red vs. blue” political framework, working as a Hooters Girl, and much more–are an important addition to any discussion on contemporary America.

Sarah Smarsh is a journalist who has reported for The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The Guardian, and many other publications. Her first book, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her second book, She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Smarsh is a frequent political commentator and speaker on socioeconomic class. She lives in Kansas.