Maggie Smith, Dear Writer: Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life

Smith will be in conversation with poet and essayist Danusha Laméris, former Santa Cruz Poet Laureate and co-founder of The Hive Poetry Collective. "Maggie Smith has created an offering here of great substance and generosity—walking writers of all ages (and of all levels) through the sometimes wild and terrifying landscape of literary endeavor. With encouraging words, stories from her own life, and—best of all—exercises that are actually helpful, she lends a hand to all. I admire this book, and its author, with all my heart." —Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Magic Your RSVP helps us plan for your arrival and keep in touch with any changes. Thank you for registering! Drawing from her twenty years of teaching experience and her bestselling Substack newsletter For Dear Life, Maggie Smith breaks down creativity into ten essential elements: attention, wonder, vision, play, surprise, vulnerability, restlessness, tenacity, connection, and hope. Each element is explored through short, inspiring, and craft-focused essays, followed by generative writing prompts. Dear Writer provides tools that artists of all experience levels can apply to their own creative practices and carry with them into all genres and all areas of life. Maggie Smith is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of eight books of poetry and prose, including You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, Goldenrod, Keep Moving, and My Thoughts Have Wings. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received a Pushcart Prize, and numerous grants and awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Best American Poetry, and more. You can follow her on social media @MaggieSmithPoet. Danusha Laméris, poet and essayist, was raised in Northern California by a Dutch father and Barbadian mother. A Pushcart Prize recipient and 2020 Lucille Clifton Legacy Award honoree, she served as Santa Cruz County’s Poet Laureate (2018–2020). Her work appears in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, Poetry, and more. Her poem Small Kindnesses has been widely shared, translated, and adapted. She is the author of The Moons of August (2014), Bonfire Opera (2020), and Blade by Blade (2024). Laméris teaches in Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program.

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