Loretta Smith is a writer of true stories, a committed feminist and environmental activist. She holds a Bachelor of Education in Creative Arts and a Graduate Certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign or Other Language (TESOL) as well as being an experienced Life Coach.
Loretta’s career has spanned teaching, community theatre, case management, and various roles in the disability, mental health and aged care sectors. Aside from trying to save the planet from human destruction and getting through the pile of books on her bedside table, Loretta likes to muck around on her piano making up songs most people will never hear.
This is the result of playing in a band once and performing in a few A Cappella groups when she wrote and arranged comparatively short ditties.
Nowadays she co-hosts the weekly radio program Take Me To Your Reader on JOY94.9 with her writing group The Cartridge Family where they interview authors of all stripes and discuss all things writerly.
Loretta’s bestselling biography A Spanner in the Works: The extraordinary story of Alice Anderson and Australia’s first ‘all-girl’ garage (Hachette, 2019) inspired the play Garage Girls, which performed at La Mama Theatre in 2023 to a sell-out audience. The book has also been optioned for a TV series.
Loretta’s memoir, Corpus in Extremis, is based on (but not limited to) living with the rare genetic bone condition Osteogenesis Imperfecta and explores her incredible backstory to researching and writing A Spanner in the Works.