Join me in this live, two-hour conversation with Matthew Zapruder and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about what it means to prioritize your creative practice in ways that allow you to stay productive and feel most like yourself – no matter what the rest of your life looks like.

Hi, my name is Maggie Smith. I’m the author of four books of poetry, an illustrated picture book for children, and three books of prose, including You Could Make This Place Beautiful, a New York Times bestselling memoir, and Dear Writer, my brand-new craft book on writing and creativity. I’m on the MFA faculty of the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University, and I’ve worked as an editor for many years. I live in Columbus, Ohio, with my two children, who are inexplicably now 16 and 12. I’m deeply Midwestern, and I write a lot about family, memory, and place.

I wrote my first poem 35 years ago, and I’ve been teaching and mentoring writers for more than 20 years. I wrote much of my first book of poems, Lamp of the Body, while juggling graduate coursework and a job as a receptionist at a car dealership. (It’s amazing an 18-line switchboard metaphor doesn’t appear in that book!) I wrote a fair amount of my second book of poems, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, in a cubicle during my lunch breaks when I worked in publishing. A decent amount of my third collection, Good Bones, was scribbled out during my children’s naps or late at night after they were asleep.

I mention these working conditions because we all have aspects of our lives that make creating difficult: work, or caregiving, or health issues, or burnout. When I look back at my writing career, I see something surprising and even counterintuitive: The more challenging my life was, the more I wrote and published. My last four books—Keep Moving, Goldenrod, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, and My Thoughts Have Wings,—came together during a brutal six-year stretch. My marriage ended. The pandemic hit. I became a solo parent. None of these events scream “time for art!” But I learned something about myself during those years, which is that I can and will prioritize my creative practice regardless of what the rest of my life looks like. I feel the most like me when I’m writing, so in times of upheaval, it’s a way of coming home to myself.

I’d love for you to join me for my upcoming 120-minute session with my friend, Matthew Zapruder. Five Things I’ve Learned about Creativity – During Times of Upheaval will focus on the ways we can remain dedicated to our creative practice despite—and, in some cases, because of—personal and professional challenges.