Before you can be anything, you have to be yourself.
– E. L. Konigsburg
About ME
Maureen Egan has been a freelance writer for national and regional publications, a magazine columnist, an English teacher and a creator of an award-winning food events business. She has written two nonfiction books about Richmond, Virginia, her home of 30 years. A member of 12 x 12 and SCBWI, she is now re-focusing on writing picture book texts and poetry for children. She was a 2022 Baron Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society, researching a nonfiction picture book. Maureen brings a quirky sensibility, insight and liveliness to everything she writes, except this.
More about Maureen
As a freelance writer, Maureen has had essays and features published in Southern Living, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, The Christian Science Monitor, Virginia Living, Richmond magazine and more, as well as her At Home column for R*Home 2003 -2015. Her poem, “Night Rise,” appeared in the May/June 2023 edition of Cricket. Highlights and Wee Ones have purchased other poems for children. In 2010, she wrote Insiders’ Guide to Richmond. She then co-founded a food event business, researching and sharing the unvarnished, multi-layered history of Richmond, Virginia while highlighting local eateries and attractions. That led to co-producing Fire, Flour & Fork, an award-winning, curated food festival 2014-2019 and co-authoring Richmond’s Culinary History in 2017. Maureen is back to writing full-time, re-energized to write picture books and poetry as well as nonfiction for children and adults.
Maureen lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband, tickled that her two adult children have put down roots close by.
Affiliations
- Member, James River Writers
- Member, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators
- Participant, 12 x 12 Challenge
- 2022, 2021 & 2020, StoryStorm
There’s often paint on my hands and dirt on my shirt because I learn by doing (and undoing). The crumbs on my lap are a different story.
– ME
Writing
Writing for adults
So much of Maureen’s writing for adults springs from childhood or hearkens back to it. Specializing in humorous, heartfelt essays and travel, she’s written dozens of articles, including an offbeat column in R*Home for 12 years, and has had features and essays in Southern Living, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, The Christian Science Monitor, Richmond magazine, Virginia Living and elsewhere. In 2010 she wrote Insiders’ Guide to Richmond for Globe Pequot Press and co-authored Richmond’s Culinary History in 2017.
Writing for children
Maureen has studied at Highlights Foundation and is an active member of 12 x 12, SCBWI and several critique groups. Her poem “Night Rise” was published in the May/June 2023 edition of Cricket. Highlights and Wee Ones have purchased other poems. She writes picture book texts and poems that range from rollicking romps to the quiet and cryptic. A Where the Wild Things Are poster she swiped decades ago from a younger sister hangs in her office. Now that she’s back writing for children, we’ll call that foreshadowing.
Examples
The South's Best Restaurant 2018: L'Opossum
L’Opossum Sur La Colline de l’Orégon. The full name hints at mischief — and mystery. [ Southern Living ]
Thirteen Ways of Looking at My Living Room
It wasn’t my living room then. It was very much the Shumates’ home — unusual angles, high ceilings and walls of windows with views that seduced us. [ R•Home ]
Tie-Dyed Communal Capitalism
Virginia’s answer to a Pawley’s Island is the Twin Oaks hammock, made in a Louisa County commune. [ Virginia Living ]
It’s All Relative
I am a long way from distilling my memories of vacationing in the same house with relatives into a story suitable for children. [ R•Home ]
Hot Tub Hubbub
Do not go gentle into that hot tub. Rage, rage against electrifying rub-a-dub. I have the soul of a poet. The body of one, too. [ Richmond Magazine ]
Goodnight Kitchen
If Clement Hurd had used my kitchen as inspiration for his illustrations in Goodnight, Moon, Margaret Wise Brown’s classic pb, no child would ever have drifted off to sleep. [ R•Home ]
Books
Richmond's Culinary History: Seeds of Change
Richmond’s culinary history spans more than four hundred years and includes forgotten cooks and makers who paved the way for Richmond’s vibrant modern food scene.
Insiders' Guide to Richmond VA
When it was published in 2010, Insiders’ Guide to Richmond was the essential source for in-depth travel and relocation information to Virginia’s capital city. It’s still durned good as an overview.
Blog
Nothing Ever Happens on My Blog
Fall Writing Frenzy again!
Inspired by the above photo (and all the trees I've ever loved) for Kaitlyn Sanchez's Fall Writing Frenzy contest, here is: TREE REVERIE (162 words) By Maureen Egan Tree lovers sightsee when they have a minute; we scroll our mind’s eye and...
Night Rise
Glad to have this out in the world in the May/June edition of Cricket.
Lucky Duck
I reworked an earlier piece for the new #KidLitVibes contest run by a very engaged and generous PB critique group. I spun the wheel and got lucky, literally, as my word. I wasn't going to enter as nothing had occurred to me, until I went for an evening stroll and...
