ESPN's Stephen A Smith has memoir coming in January 2023

NEW YORK (AP) — Dallas Cowboy fans be warned: ESPN's Stephen A. Smith has a memoir coming out next year.

13A, an imprint of Gallery Books, announced Tuesday that Smith's “Straight Shooter: A Memoir of Second Chances and First Takes” is scheduled for January 2023. According to 13A, Smith will share stories about growing up poor in New York City, his early years in journalism and his long history of speaking his mind — to a fault — about sports (the Cowboys are a favorite target) and a wide of range of issues.

“This book is a long time coming. Due to my fixation on privacy pertaining to my personal life, it took a lot of time, and a lot of prodding by loved ones, to finally get me to do this," Smith said in a statement.

"But as I once told my Mom, ‘if I’m going to write a book, I’ll be damned if I’m holding back. I’m going to speak my truth, say what I have to say, just so everyone knows where I stand and why.’ I know I’ve done that in this book. I had to do so eventually. It was time. No matter the consequences.”

Smith has a history of making controversial remarks, including a joke about women soccer players and comments about domestic violence that led to ESPN briefly suspending him in 2014.