Tracy Smith Mathis

Author

S2: E10

After a career in commercial real estate development, Tracy Smith became a freelance columnist, author, and public speaker. She completed broadcasting school and worked as an Associate Producer with Naka Productions on the Telly Award-winning documentary "Moving America's Lighthouse" with Walter Cronkite. Decades later, Mr. Cronkite plays a pivotal role in Tracy’s debut book, Pennies from Vietnam. A Sister at Home, a Brother at War, published by McFarland Books in 2024.

Tracy lives near Charlotte, NC and continues sharing her family stories and personal experiences with grief and PTSD, to promote healthy discussion about generational trauma and healing that can be found through storytelling. She is now an Ambassador for the Military Writers Society of America, to help veterans and their families tell their own stories and commemorate their service.

1. What genre(s) do you write?

Memoir / Non Fiction

2. Do you have a newly released novel? What is the title and a link to buy the novel?

Novels are fiction, I’m told…but my book IS newly released, the title is Pennies from Vietnam: A Sister at Home, a Brother at War.

3. Are there any other social media links, websites, or other places to learn about you that we should add?

4. What is your favorite part of being an author?

Hearing the heartfelt feedback from readers and how the book touched them.

5. How does your writing entwine with your community?

It’s been the military community that I’ve focused more on…rather than my local community. However, both have been supportive and I’ve met so many amazing authors and veterans and their families that all validate my WHY for writing this book.

6. Being Traditionally Published, who is your publisher?

MacFarland Publishing Company.

7. If you could give any advice to a new writer/author, what would it be?

Be brave, or don’t bother…because it matters! Only the brave rise to the top of the slush pile. And some advice I got early on from an editor that I’ll never forget: Write DRUNK. Edit SOBER.