Maggie Smith and Megan Stielstra: Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change

When Maggie Smith, the award-winning author of the viral poem “Good Bones,” started writing daily Twitter posts in the wake of her divorce, they unexpectedly caught fire. She was surprised yet deeply gratified by the outpouring of heartfelt responses that she received. Now, in Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change, Ms. Smith gives her readers a deeply moving book of quotes and essays, writing about new beginnings as opportunities for transformation. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold, Keep Moving celebrates the beauty and strength on the other side of loss. This is a book for anyone who has gone through a difficult time and is wondering: What comes next?

For fans of Anne Lamott and Cleo Wade, Keep Moving is a collection of quotes and essays on facing life’s challenges with creativity, courage, and resilience. In today’s fast-paced and often stressful world, Ms. Smith offers her readers a chance to calmly reflect on the positive aspects of their lives.

Ms. Smith is the award-winning author of several books of poetry including Good Bones, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, and Lamp of the Body. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, she has also received several Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New York Times, Tin House, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and more.

Ms. Smith will be in conversation with Megan Stielstra, author of three collections, most recently The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, named the 2017 Book of the Year by the Chicago Review of Books. Her work appears in the Best American Essays, New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Believer, Tin House, and elsewhere. A longtime company member with 2nd Story, she has told stories for National Public Radio, Museum of Contemporary Art, Goodman Theatre, and regularly with The Paper Machete live news magazine at The Green Mill.