Maggie Queeney /
August 1, 2018
Monster, a Meaning

About The Author

Maggie Queeney

Maggie Queeney is the author of settler, winner of the 2017 Baltic Writing Residency Poetry Chapbook Contest. Her recent work can be found in the The Laurel Review, Bennington Review, The Cincinnati Review, Poetry Northwest, and Copper Nickel. She reads and writes in Chicago.


Some necessary context: I was given the diagnosis of PTSD very young. Then, fairy tale worlds resembled the world I lived in: children were harmed; the world was hostile; monsters existed. I survived, in part, through the same type of magic, which could take me anywhere, turn me into anything other than myself. Today, as a writer, I am drawn to the fairy tale for what it teaches about the power and processes and language of trauma; how it reminds us that trauma, like magic, can transform and teach us how to survive.