Maggie Smith

Poet, mother, and viral sensation Maggie Smith was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1977. Growing up in the midwest, Smith began writing poetry as a teenager. Though she submitted numerous poems to her high school literary magazine, her work was never accepted for publication. Despite this discouragement, Smith would become one of the most recognized poets of her generation; her poem “Good Bones” was published by Waxwing in 2016 and went viral internationally, garnering an estimated one million views. “Good Bones,” which Smith wrote in one go at a Starbucks, has been translated into nearly a dozen languages and recited by actress Meryl Streep at Lincoln Center. Smith earned a BA from Ohio Wesleyan University and an MFA from The Ohio State University, and has gone on to teach creative writing at several institutions, including Gettysburg College and Antioch University Los Angeles. She holds the same enthusiasm for teaching as she does for writing, now serving as faculty for Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing. Much of Smith’s inspiration comes from science and nature, as well as her children’s endless curiosities and her personal experiences as a mother. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship recipient, Maggie Smith has received six Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council and is the Editor at Large for the prestigious literary journal The Kenyon Review. Smith lives with her family in Bexley, Ohio.