Writers @ Stanton: Seana Smith

A memoir of family secrets, addiction and escape.

From the outside, Seana Smith lived an enviable life. An Oxford graduate, a successful career with the BBC and Sydney’s Channel 9, a bestselling author, happily married. But behind this perfect life she had a secret: Seana was a drinker, and alcohol was slowly taking away her life, destroying her health, her emotional well-being, her world.

With engaging style and wit, Going Under lays bare a confusing childhood of Scottish sailing adventures and also brutal violence from her bullying, alcoholic father; where punches were thrown, broken bones hidden and her family lived in fear.

Learning from the best, Seana drank her way through tutorials at Oxford University (which were held in the pub), through the sexual misadventures of her twenties and through the intensity and mundanity of motherhood.

It took the death of her parents and a tree-change to Orange in regional NSW for Seana to find the courage to break free; a new life in a new world. She had finally left the past behind.

About the author

Seana Smith is the author of Sydney for Under Fives and the co-author of The Australian Autism Handbook, Beyond the Baby Blues and The Superfoods Index. She studied Latin, Greek and Old and Mediaeval English at Wadham College, University of Oxford before coming to Australia and becoming a best-selling author and well-followed blogger on family and health issues.

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Host or Publisher Stanton Library