PATRICK SMITHWICK is the author of the acclaimed trilogy of memoirs, Racing My Father, Flying Change and Racing Time. He has won awards for newspaper features, short stories, and magazine pieces while working as a steeplechase jockey and exercise rider of Thoroughbred racehorses on East Coast tracks, and as a Chesapeake Bay waterman, newspaper reporter and English teacher.

Patrick holds a BA and an MLA from Johns Hopkins University, an MA from Hollins College, and an EfM (Education for Ministry) from the University of the South. The author met Ansley, his wife-to-be, forty-eight years ago at Hollins College.

Patrick and Ansley live on a farm in Monkton, Maryland, and are the parents of three children: Paddy, Andrew and Eliza.