Cover art by Charlie Layton
DON’T LET THEM EAT THE BABY:
WHY ROLLER DERBY IS THE GREATEST SPORT NEVER SOLD
The debut memoirella from the former Executive Director of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA), Erica Vanstone
With Introduction by Jane McManus, former journalist with ESPN, author of The Fast Track
Coming October 14, 2025
Paperback ISBN: 979-8991307154
Ebook: 979-8991307130
Now available for pre-order!
You can pre-order this book through any indie bookstore in your area.
Amazon (ebook avail for presale; pending pre-sale for paperback)
A book’s pre-order sales immensely help a book’s success. It helps get them on best seller lists and helps the ol’ algorithm machine.
About the book….
The year is 2006, and roller derby is on the brink of a massive explosion. This was right after the TV show Rollergirls, before the movie Whip It, and before Erica Vanstone ever dreamed of becoming the Executive Director of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA). Soon, the newly married NYU film school grad will nearly flip her life upside down to get the sport of roller derby on broadcast TV. And it all starts the night Erica walks into a Camden roller rink.
Erica doesn’t realize her soul needs saving until she reads the words on the back of someone’s T-shirt: Roller derby saved my soul. With AC/DC blasting overhead, Erica watches two teams of fishnet-clad and tattooed women muscling their way around a rink in a counterclockwise direction. As the unapologetically badass skaters fly by, both intimidating and inspiring, Erica doesn’t yet understand the sport, but something in her bones tells her she wants in on it.
Before she even knows the rules, Erica finds herself announcing at roller derby bouts all over the city and soon, the country. While navigating career shifts, motherhood and eye-roll-inducing misogyny, Erica finds a way to help grow the sport into what it is today, while never giving up on its roots or herself.
In this memoirella, Erica Vanstone weaves humorous, humbling personal narrative with cultural journalism to make the case for women’s sports as a community lifeline. Don’t Let Them Eat the Baby is told in raw, unrelenting prose by one of roller derby’s architects. Now more than ever, the world needs safer sport spaces like roller derby: a sport steeped in authenticity and belonging. In her debut memoirella, Vanstone shares why roller derby is the greatest sport never sold and learns what parts of her own soul really needed saving.
Listen the the Banana Pitch Podcast interview
Advance Praise
Advance Praise
“Vanstone takes us on a romp through the chaotic origin of modern roller derby; the highs and lows, the incredible people who play this sport balancing their real and often respectable lives with the possibility of a broken nose or tailbone at each game or practice. This book is at once hilarious, meticulously reported and well-written. It'll make you want to put on a pair of skates and throw an elbow.”
– Jane McManus, former journalist with ESPN, author of The Fast Track
“Don't Let Them Eat the Baby is a lot of things: An engaging chronicle of self-discovery, and a tour through a vibrant, messy subculture. It's about ownership and agency, about messing up and trying again, falling down and getting back up. Roller derby, with its inventiveness and inclusiveness, its sense of humor and community, might be needed more now than ever. And so are stories like this about women fighting for their space in sports — and everywhere else.”
- Emma Span, Enterprise Editor, The Athletic
“An inspirational tale of motherhood, sisterhood and what to do with a film degree when you're an adult. Vanstone’s punchy memoir is about how sometimes you need to get knocked on your ass a few times to find yourself, on and off the track.”
– Sean Burns, WBUR, Boston
“I think the coolest thing about this reflection and revelation is that roller derby has never been about making grassroots organizing a corporate gig. Sure there has to be some structure, rules and work to create more inclusivity and equity, but the DIY, grassroots, SOUL of derby is that it is for the community by the community and will not change to be something it's not. The NBA, NFL, MLB make billions of dollars, but you can't feel their souls. The players are so far away from accessible that even if they fuck up, you can't call them on it because their managers and handlers and layers of wealth don't even hear you. Derby and its members are the key holders to the proverbial kingdom. We get to shape and adapt as we learn and grow. It's when we try to make us something we're not that shit starts to get out of whack.”
– Jumpy McGee aka April Fournier
A note on this book’s funding & pricing
Funding: At a time where arts funding is at an all-time low, we rely on community to help fund our books. Erica’s book was 115% funded on July 30 via a very fun Kickstarter campaign. Thank you to everyone who contributed, and for everyone who didn’t get a chance: pre-sales are now live and are tremendously helpful to the success of a book!
How pre-sales help a book: All pre-sales get tallied up and on the book’s publication day, they all go live at once. So say over the next 12 weeks we get say, 100 pre-sales per week, on October 14 it’ll look like we got 1,200 sales all in on day one, and could spike it to best seller status in its categories.