Margaret Rose Smith is a writer and scholar from Chicago, Illinois. She recently graduated from the University of Chicago’s Master of Arts Program in Humanities.

A native Chicagoan and lifelong resident, she likes to explore the history of the city and often writes fiction set in the area. An excerpt of her debut novel, The Midway Point, won the 2024 MAPH Thesis Award. Margaret was the recipient of the Ralph A. Haworth Writers Scholarship in 2019, and her debut play, The Sky Above You, was performed as part of the University of Chicago’s New Work Week in 2020, and was a finalist in Pegasus Theatre’s Young Playwrights Festival in 2019. In her spare time, she enjoys sewing, losing at Scrabble, and trying to teach her cat not to eat plastic bags.

“Demonstrating deft skills with sources ranging from novels and popular culture to critical theory, archival research, and visual culture, [The Midway Point'] is a truly genre-bending, boundaryless foray into what creative, historical work can and might be. I have rarely encountered a piece of writing, creative or otherwise, that so brilliantly and convincingly maps the complicated web between the weightiness of historical change and the texture of experience. I hope you feel the same.”

— MAPH Preceptor Alex Fraser on Margaret’s debut novel

In addition to regularly writing short-form fiction, Margaret has been writing her debut novel for the past two years. The first three chapters made up her B.A. thesis in creative writing at the University of Chicago, which earned honors. As an M.A. student, her final thesis consisted of the first eight chapters (with the first three heavily revised) and an accompanying critical essay.

  • The Midway Point: A Novel (Excerpt, Common Forms, September 2024) [x]

    "'That Middle State': Diaries, Conscience, and the Temptations of Turn-of-the-Century Chicago Women" (Common Forms, September 2024) [x]

    “Natural Blonde” (Sliced Bread Magazine, forthcoming Spring 2024)

    “In the Next World” (Parliament Literary Journal, Winter 2024 [x])

    Reviews for Picture This Post, 2020 [x]

    Five Flights Up: An Anthology (After School Matters, 2018)

  • Recipient of the 2024 MAPH Thesis Award for The Midway Point: A Novel and "'That Middle State': Diaries, Conscience, and the Temptations of Turn-of-the-Century Chicago Women"

    Honors in undergraduate creative writing at the University of Chicago.

    Recipient of the Ralph A. Haworth Writers Scholarship from 2019-2023.

    Featured playwright in the 2020 University of Chicago New Work Week. [x]

    Finalist in the 2019 33rd Annual Pegasus Theater’s Young Playwrights Festival.

    Semi-Finalist in the 2019 Eugene O’Neill Theater’s Young Playwrights Festival.

  • M.A. from University of Chicago Master’s of Arts Program in the Humanities (MAPH)

    B.A. in Creative Writing and Art History from University of Chicago (2023)