Maggie Smith, an award-winning poet, writer, editor, and teacher, will read from her work at the University of Lynchburg on Monday, Feb. 10.
The event — part of the University’s Thornton Endowment reading series — will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Hall Campus Center’s Memorial Ballroom. Admission is free, the public is welcome, and a Q&A session and book signing will follow the reading.
Smith is the author of The New York Times bestselling memoir “You Could Make This Place Beautiful,” which was described by Time magazine as a “bittersweet study in both grief and joy” and by NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly as “a triumph.”
Her poem “Good Bones” was lauded by the public radio program The World as “the official poem of 2016.” It became an international sensation the next year, when it was featured on an episode of the primetime drama “Madam Secretary.”
Smith’s forthcoming book, “Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life,” will be released by Atria/Simon & Schuster on April 1.
Smith has published work in more than a dozen literary journals and magazines and has received numerous awards, including among others, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and several fellowships.
She is on the faculty of Spaulding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing.
“I find myself experiencing both total shock and complete gratitude that … Maggie Smith will be visiting our campus,” said Jer Bryant, associate professor of English and the Richard H. Thornton endowed professor.
Bryant added that while on campus, Smith will visit a class taught by Dr. Kelly Jacobson, assistant professor of English.
“Unquestionably, Smith is one of the best poets of our time, and I’m ever grateful that our students will have an opportunity to connect with someone who brilliantly writes in each genre that she engages,” Bryant said.
“Smith will … meet one-on-one with several of our creative writing students. What a gift her visit will be for our entire community at University of Lynchburg!”
Jacobson — also author of several books, including the forthcoming “Lies of a Toymaker” — teaches Smith’s work every semester. “I’ve been a huge fan of Maggie Smith since I first connected with her on social media,” Jacobson said.
“Watching her become an international phenomenon with her poem ‘Good Bones,’ which I teach every semester … and reading her early posts that would later become ‘Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change’ has been such a lesson in always moving forward, no matter the obstacles in front of us as writers — or just as people in general.
“I’m looking forward to meeting her in person, and I know our students will be so inspired by her endless determination and incredible talent.”
For more information about the Thornton reading, contact Bryant at bryant.j@lynchburg.edu.
The Thornton Endowment brings established writers to campus each semester — novelists, poets, playwrights, journalists, essayists, and others. Over a day or two, these visiting writers do a public reading or lecture, and oftentimes they meet with creative writing students for classes or workshops.
The visits complement the English Department’s writing courses, which include Introduction to Creative Writing, Fiction Writing, Poetry Writing, and Writing in the Workplace, all of which are taught by University of Lynchburg faculty who are writers as well as teachers.
