For our 50th episode, Holly Rizzuto Palker and Amanda Fields chat with Maggie Smith, author of Dear Writer, about applying poetic license to writing and beyond, embracing the beginner’s mind, and aging in reverse through creativity. Smith’s national bestseller guides the reader on how to unleash the creative mind with ten ingredients, each one explored through inspirational essays and writing prompts. It’s a book for artists of all genres and for everyday life.
Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1977, Maggie Smith is the New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful; My Thoughts Have Wings, a picture book illustrated by SCBWI Portfolio grand prize winner Leanne Hatch; the national bestsellers Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life, Goldenrod and Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change; as well as Good Bones, named one of the Best Five Poetry Books of 2017 by the Washington Post and winner of the 2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Poetry; The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, winner of the 2012 Dorset Prize and the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Poetry; and Lamp of the Body, winner of the 2003 Benjamin Saltman Award.
A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received six 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. Her poems have been widely published and anthologized, appearing in Best American Poetry, the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, and so many others. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, on the Poetry Foundation website, and elsewhere.
Smith holds a BA from Ohio Wesleyan University and an MFA from The Ohio State University. After working for several years in trade book and educational publishing, she now works as a freelance writer, editor, and educator. She has taught creative writing at Gettysburg College, Ohio Wesleyan University, in the MFA and undergraduate programs at The Ohio State University, for the Antioch University Los Angeles Low-Residency MFA, and as MFA faculty for the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing. She is also the host of The Slowdown, a poetry podcast from American Public Media, supported in part by the Poetry Foundation.
Maggie Smith’s most recent title The People’s Project, an anthology co-curated with Saeed Jones (Washington Square Press/Atria) was released September 9, 2025. Her forthcoming book, A Suit or a Suitcase, a collection of poems (Washington Square Press/Atria) is coming March 24, 2026.
