Marion Roach

Marion Roach Smith (born April 7, 1956) is a non-fiction author and a former staff member of The New York Times who advocates "the power of the personal narrative". and the family problems that arose because of it. A reviewer for The Baltimore Sun described the book as "simply the best evocation of an insidious illness I have ever read." The book has been published in Canada, England, France, Japan, and the United States.

Roach wrote The Roots of Desire: The Myth, Meaning, and Sexual Power of Red Hair (2005), a non-fiction piece about the history and oddities of red heads and their reactions from society.

She is also the coauthor of Dead Reckoning: The New Science of Catching Killers with physician Michael Baden (2001), and the author of The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life (2011).

Career After graduating college, Roach was hired by The New York Times. Beginning in 1998, she has been an instructor at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, New York, of a class called "Writing What You Know" that teaches about writing memoirs.

Along with her books, Roach's writing has also been published in the New York Times Magazine, Roach is married to the Times Union editor Rex Smith, and they have a daughter.