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Maggie Smith

Biography

Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith is the award-winning author of YOU COULD MAKE THIS PLACE BEAUTIFUL, GOOD BONES, THE WELL SPEAKS OF ITS OWN POISON, LAMP OF THE BODY, and the national bestsellers GOLDENROD and KEEP MOVING: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received several Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Poetry and more.

Maggie Smith

Books by Maggie Smith

You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir
by Maggie Smith - Memoir, Nonfiction

In her memoir YOU COULD MAKE THIS PLACE BEAUTIFUL, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes. With the spirit of self-inquiry and empathy she’s known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness and narrative itself. The power of these pieces is cumulative: page after page, they build into a larger interrogation of family, work and patriarchy.