New York Times bestselling author and poet Maggie Smith distills creativity and the craft of writing with a practical guide perfect for fans of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.

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 will be joined in conversation by writer Betsy Boyd and the program will include a brief performance by multidisciplinary artist Katherine Fahey. 

About the Author: 

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.

About the Moderator: 

Betsy Boyd is a fiction writer, journalist, and essayist. She directs the Creative Writing and Publishing Arts MFA program at the University of Baltimore and is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council award, an Elliot Coleman Writing Fellowship, a James A. Michener Fellowship and residencies through Fundación Valparaíso, the Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program for Artists and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Betsy’s fiction has been published in Kenyon Review, StoryQuarterly, Shenandoah, at American Short Fiction, Hunger Mountain, Eclectica, and elsewhere. Her short story “Scarecrow” received a Pushcart Prize.

About the Peformer: 

Katherine Fahey is a multidisciplinary artist who combines the crafts of storytelling, papercutting, and shadow puppetry. Her pieces are either based on stories or songs. Some of Katherine’s work is based on folk tales as far reaching as the southern swamps of Louisiana to the northern reaches of Inuit Quebec. Others are personal stories from her childhood in Virginia and the streets of her longtime home of Baltimore.  Katherine’s work is usually in the form of a crankie, a bygone form of visual performance, involving a cranked scroll of artwork in a box..  Her crankies have in the past been shared live, in darkened space, which creates a warm feeling of sitting around the fireside. 

Accompanying Katherine will be puppeteer and foley artist, and visionary artist, Dan Van Allen.

About the Program: 

• To attend in person please register here. 
• Doors will open to registered attendees at 6 pm. 
• A local bookseller will be on-site and have books available for purchase.
• Free parking vouchers are available to program attendees who park at the Franklin Street Garage (15 W. Franklin Street) after 4pm.  Ask Pratt event staff for your parking voucher prior to or after the program. 
• This free event will be presented in-person and virtually.