Canongate scoops Smith's 'lush and heartrending' memoir

Canongate has scooped You Could Make This Place Beautiful, a "lush and heartrending memoir" exploring coming of age in your middle age, by poet and author Maggie Smith.

The memoir debuted at number three in the New York Times bestseller list and Helena Gonda, senior commissioning editor, acquired UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights from Nicole Bond at Simon & Schuster.

Canongate will publish in September 2023 into hardback, e-book and audiobook, with a paperback to follow.

In You Could Make This Place Beautiful, the publisher’s synopsis said: "Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels… The book begins with one woman’s personal heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes.

"It is a story about a mother’s fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman’s love and regard for herself. With a poet’s attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new – something beautiful."

Gonda said: "Maggie’s memoir is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives, but above all, it is an argument for possibility – that it is never too late to discover your power and create the life you want."

Smith is the author of Good Bones (Tupelo Press), The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison (Tupelo Press), Lamp of the Body (Red Hen Press), Goldenrod (Atria/One Signal Publishers) and Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change (Corsair).

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 added: "Canongate is home to many of the writers I admire most, writers who are taking exciting risks with form and content – Nick Cave, Rebecca Solnit, Miranda July, Kerri ní Dochartaigh, Annie Dillard, Ruth Ozeki and Anne Lamott among others. I’m honoured to join them and to have You Could Make This Place Beautiful on Canongate’s distinguished list."