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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
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Self-help, personal development & practical advice

KEEP MOVING

Maggie Smith

Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change

KEEP MOVING is a collection of affirmations meant to inspire hope and courage through life's difficult transitions. The goals are forward thinking rather than reflective of the past: each one ends with "keep moving." The idea is that hope begets hope, and that practicing hope and courage on a daily basis, even when we are struggling and optimism feels less than natural, will help us arrive at that better place.

Two years ago, Maggie Smith's poem "Good Bones" about how and when to talk with children about the hard realities of life went viral. Labeled by PRI as the official poem of 2016, "Good Bones" has been translated into almost a dozen languages, featured on a primetime drama, read by Meryl Streep at Lincoln Center at the 2017 Poetry and the Creative Mind gala, and earned Smith a plethora of high-profile social media followers. Yesterday, the New York Time's Modern Love published Smith's essay "Tracking the Demise of My Marriage on Google Maps" in which she contemplates the pictures taken over time of her home's exterior and the stages of her family's intimate life that the images correspond to. The Washington Post's Nora Krug called the piece, already widely shared on social media, "beautiful: poignant and eloquent, brave and fascinating." Laura Bliss, staff writer at The Atlantic, called it a "devastating read." Earlier this fall, with her relationship of nearly two decades coming to an end, Smith began tweeting daily goals (@maggiesmithpoet) as a way to move forward through her grief, anger, and uncertainty of her divorce. What she has found is that like "Good Bones," her words have once again proven meaningful to peoplethis time for those experiencing difficult transitions. Helping Smith and others to re-imagine a future rather than simply reflect the past and/or endure the present,these goals or affirmations are a means to harness hope and courage on a daily basis, even when we are struggling and optimism feels less than natural. With 365 entries, TODAY'S GOAL: KEEP MOVING is a collection of this work, along with new content, meant to provide daily inspiration and help us arrive at a better place. TODAY'S GOAL: KEEP MOVING will appeal to the consumers who have been drawn to the emotional candor of Rupi Kaur's poetry and the uplifting wordplay of Lin-Manuel Miranda's GMORNING, GNIGHT! Little Pep Talks for Me & You. Maggie Smith is the author of three award-winning books of poetry: GOOD BONES (Tupelo Press, 2017), named one of the Best Five Poetry Books of 2017 by the Washington Post and winner of the 2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Poetry; THE WELL SPEAKS OF ITS OWN POISON (Tupelo Press, 2015), winner of the 2012 Dorset Prize, selected by Kimiko Hahn, and the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Poetry; and LAMP OF THE BODY (Red Hen Press, 2005), winner of the 2003 Benjamin Saltman Award. Smith is also the author of three prizewinning chapbooks. She has been widely published, appearing in the New York Times, Tin House,The Paris Review,Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, The Believer,The Kenyon Review,The Gettysburg Review, Guernica, The Iowa Review,The Southern Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among many other journals and anthologies. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received six 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. With BA from Ohio Wesleyan University and an MFA from The Ohio State University, Smith has taught creative writing at Gettysburg College, Ohio Wesleyan University, and as Visiting Faculty in the MFA programs at The Ohio State University, Hamline University, and in other programs around the country. She is also Board President of the recently revived STORYmagazine and a Consulting Editor for the Kenyon Review. She lives in Bexley, Ohio with her two children.

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Book Published 2020-10-26 by Signal/Atria

Comments

Maggie Smith demonstrates what happens when an abundance of heart and intelligence meets the hands of a master craftsperson.

Powerful essays on loss, endurance, and renewal.

I lived this book in real time. I was going through something hard and heartbreaking - how do you get out of bed in the morning? - and every day I'd log onto social media and go to Maggie's account to read what you now hold in your hands: truth and pain and empathy and the wisdom that comes with living. We keep moving. I kept moving. So can you. I will carry copies of this beautiful gift of a book in my pockets and give them to everyone I know.

In Keep Moving, poet Maggie Smith takes what William James called a 'torn-to-pieces-hood' and knits it into something new and surprising and fortifying. I'm so grateful for the clarity, compassion, and wit in these pages. This is a book that will change you, a book you will want to give to someone you love. I've never read anything quite like it.

It's no surprise that a poet of Maggie Smith's immense talent - her attentiveness to nuance, her eye for detail, her ability to notice the things most people don't and render them with such precision and care - has created an astonishing hybrid piece of work. This is beating heart of a book, detailing how to pick up the pieces of the life you once had and mould them into something new. Candid, lyrical, and full of empathy, this is a book that feels vital and welcome in these times - for those who are struggling, or anyone just seeking joy. A stunning and wise book.

Maggie Smith's voice is the one I hear in my head, the one that keeps me going when Idon't feel I can. And now, with this book, she has gifted the entire world with that particularbrand of magic that her words convey. A gut punch in the best possible way, this book is theother hand holding your own. My favorite words are "I got you" and Maggie Smith somehow conveys that with each page.

To read Maggie Smith is to embrace the achingly precious beauty of the present moment.

In a season of unprecedented uncertainty, KEEP MOVING has arrived just in time.

A lovely reflective and insightful book that elaborates how one can survive loss and appreciate life's beauty. Reading Maggie's work made me remember why I love meditation and poetry.

I read this book in one sitting during one of the most difficult weeks of my life, and Iwanted to cut out every page and post it on the bathroom wall. Maggie's words are sodirectly comforting. This isn't lofty self-help stuff; she doesn't speak from above. Instead, she speaks next to you, whispering right in your ear that we are all in the trenches together. Every single page of this book made me breathe a little deeper and feel a little less alone.

Keep Moving speaks to you like an encouraging friend reminding you that you can feel and survive deep loss, sink into life's deep beauty, and constantly, constantly make yourself new.

Every once in a long, long while a book comes along that challenges and changes everything. Keep Moving is exactly that book: an ingenious synthesis of poetry, proverbs, journaling, lyrical prose, belles-lettres, psalms, meditations, and aphorisms. It defies any tidy definition, and thus, practically defines a new genre that gives everyone - no matter what walk of life - the gift of pausing to reflect on what we didn't know we already knew about ourselves because we never had words for it, until Maggie Smith. These pages give us a unique and poetic opportunity to recognize the joys within our failures, the peace within our terrors, the simplicity within our complex lives - and then some! It is sure to become a classic that will be read for decades to come.

I wish I'd had a copy of Keep Moving when my first marriage ended. It would have consoled my fears about being alone. Maggie Smithwrites so honestly without being brutal, and she shows readers hope while avoiding the saccharine. Keep Moving provides a new way to see transition - to change our attitudes when faced with the unexpected. To experience relief from a book is a rare and wonderful thing. Keep Moving gave me that relief.

It's in these essays that Smith exerts her superpower as a writer: her ability to find the perfect concrete metaphor for inchoate human emotions and explore it with empathy and honesty.

When we are feeling broken, untethered, or flailing in our personal grief, Maggie Smith's mantras are a faithful and forgiving companion, coaxing us through the darkness and toward our own resilience.

Smith's gem is packed with luminous quotes and essays about resilience, transformation and moving forward no matter the circumstances.

A meditation on kindness and hope, and how to move forward through grief.

Keep Moving offers a bouquet of generosities in one hand, and a bouquet of soft but firm honesty in the other. For anyone who has fought their way through a wall only to find another wall beckoning, Maggie Smith has gifted us with a warm and sprawling series of reminders and affirmations. A promise that what doesn't get better sometimes gets easier.And that, too, is worthy of celebration.

Part meditation, part essay collection and all inspiration, this beautiful little book will keep you moving forward, no matter what's holding you back.

UK: Corsair/Little Brown ; Brazil: Editora Nacional ; Korea: Positive Thinking Publishing ; Netherlands: BBNC Uitgevers ; Russia: Progress Kniga ; Turkey: Can Yayinlari

With wonder and poignancy, Maggie Smith navigates a reconstitution of self as she grieves what is lost. Her way of seeing is positively alchemical.

A shining reminder to learn all we can from this moment, rebuilding ourselves in the darkness so that we may come out wiser, kinder, and stronger on the other side.

A Poet for Times of Trouble. Read more...