This week for the book club, we have poet Maggie Smith talking about her tell-most own new bestselling memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful.

You know Maggie from a poem she wrote in an Ohio coffee shop in 2015. That poem “Good Bones” was so deeply true and beautiful that readers passed it around. And it went viral a year or two later. Poems don’t go viral, but this one did, so much so that the unimaginable happened. First. In April of 2017, Meryl Streep read that poem, “Good Bones” at a Lincoln Center gala. But there’s a next. Next, her husband –– the father of her two young children –– the fellow writer, turned lawyer she met in a creative writing class in college. That guy. He blew up the marriage with a postcard and a pine cone. 

Joining us in this conversation is one of Maggie’s and my mutual friends, activist and writer Charlotte Clymer. You know Charlotte from her regular appearances on the Mary Trump Show. She was previously the press secretary for rapid response at the Human Rights Campaign and director of communications and strategy at Catholics for Choice.

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Get More from Maggie Smith
Twitter | Website | Author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

Get More from Charlotte Clymer
Twitter | Website | Charlotte’s Web Thoughts Substack

Get More from Jen Taub:
Twitter | Follow the Money Substack | Author of BIG DIRTY MONEY