About Me
Writer • Literary Critic • Opinion Columnist
Hi, I'm maggie
I’m a writer and my work includes essays, novels, book reviews, profiles, and feature stories. As a freelance writer my work has been featured in The Guardian, LA Times, Washington Post, SKI, Field and Stream, High Country News, Mountain Outlaw, and more. I write a biweekly column titled “Facing Main” for the Flathead Beacon. I’m an adjunct instructor of composition at Flathead Valley Community College and also teach creative writing and literature courses for the continuing education department.
Media Ready Bios
Brief Bio
Maggie Neal Doherty is a writer, opinion columnist, and literary critic. She teaches writing at Flathead Community College and lives in Kalispell, Montana.
Short Bio
Maggie Neal Doherty is a writer, opinion columnist, and literary critic. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, including her viral 2023 essay, “So you decided to stop drinking? I did– and these are my year’s lessons.” She’s written for the LA Times, Washington Post, High Country News, Field and Stream, SKI, High Country News, Mountain Outlaw, Montana Quarterly, Whitefish Review, and more. She grew up in northern Michigan, received her undergraduate degree in English Writing from DePauw University, and got her MA in English Literature from Northern Arizona University. She is a contributing writer for Flathead Living and in 2018 started as an opinion columnist for the Flathead Beacon. She lives in Kalispell, Montana and teaches writing at Flathead Valley Community College.
Long Bio
Maggie Neal Doherty was raised in northern Michigan and on Marquette Island in the Upper Peninsula. There wasn’t a time in her life when she wasn’t either reading or writing, and her early literary influences include Harriet, from Harriet the Spy and the city-cool group of friends from the Babysitters Club. She wrote and illustrated her first book, Jessie Goes to Hollywood, in the fourth grade and neither her parents or her teacher had qualms about her depictions of how the main character’s family died in a plane crash (in the colored pencil drawings the fictional family looked suspiciously like her own) which left Jessie orphaned and somehow eligible for Steven Spielberg to call her and invite her to star in the hit television series “Full House.” This was entirely symbolic of a ‘90s childhood in rural Michigan.
In high school, she started her opinion column career for the school newspaper. Her first column debuted on Valentine’s Day and was a diatribe against the “Hallmark holiday.” Notably, she was class president for four years at Boyne City High School and also voted Class Clown. She attended DePauw University from 2000-2004 where she fell in love with literature and writing and pined for the West. For the campus literary magazine she interviewed Pam Houston during her visit in 2004. In 2004 she moved to northwest Montana a week after graduating from DePauw and landed a seasonal job on Flathead Lake, the largest largest west of the Great Lakes of her homeland. In 2007, her short story, “How to Speak with an Island” was featured in the first edition of the Whitefish Review. The volume also contained fiction by William Kittredge. The landscapes of northern Michigan and northwest Montana are influential to her writing and literary life
She is an MFA dropout but before she did, she had the good fortune to study with Mary Clearman Blew and the late Sherry Simpson. In 2018 she graduated with distinction from Northern Arizona University with her MA in English Literature and focused on ecocriticism in works as varied as Jane Austen and Louise Erdrich. In 2019 she presented the paper “These trees whose flesh is so much older than ours:’ Kinship, Identify, and Environment in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks” at the International Contemporary Writing Association conference at Algoma University in Ontario. Her freelance writing career began in 2010 and she also has worked as an interpretative ranger for the Forest Service, outdoor educator, bartender and waitress, and for eight years, she and her husband founded and ran a craft brewery in downtown Kalispell. Outside of writing, she was a member of the US National Telemark Ski team from 2011-2013 and competed in World Cup races in Germany, Austria, and Norway. She usually came in last or second to last.
A diverse freelance writer and essayist, she’s written about maternal mental health outcomes in the fallout of the early years of the Covid pandemic, how the popular “Yellowstone” television series impacted tourism across Montana, her own sobriety and its connection to the current sober-curious cultural moment, and profiled paleontologists, river raft guides turned writing instructors, local historians obsessed with the architecture of small Montana towns, and writers ranging from the outdoor humorist Brendan Leonard to John Perlin’s whose life’s work on the relationship between civilization and forest was revived thanks to the outdoor company Patagonia.
In various national and regional publications, she has profiled authors such as Jess Walter, Debra Magpie Earling, David James Duncan, and John N. Maclean in addition to her book criticism. She’s the founding book reviewer for Flathead Living magazine, and writes quarterly book reviews of literature of the American West and Montana.
In 2018 she started writing “Facing Main,” a biweekly column for the Flathead Beacon that focuses on the broad yet interconnected relationship between mountain towns, parenting, civic engagement, and an unwavering love for books. She teaches composition and creative writing at Flathead Valley Community College and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and Authors of the Flathead. She’s currently working on her first novel.
Two Truths and a Lie
In the fifth grade I moved to a new town and decided to participate in the school-wide talent show with a solo dance performance of En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” and decided, mid-dance, to attempt, for the first time ever, the splits. I was unsuccessful in my attempts, but my dad assured me the crowd was really cheering for me.
My creative nonfiction writing professor, Lili Wright, in utter exasperation with my frequent absences to her workshop, once sent the class to my apartment (it wasn’t located far from the academic quad) to rouse me from my bed and drag my hungover ass to class.
I graduated with my MFA in Fiction Writing from Pacific Lutheran University, was a proud member of the Rapid City Social Club, and was offered a fellowship at the Bertrand Cumberbatch Literary House specializing in ecocriticism in Jane Austen.
(Answer key: 1. True. Embarrassingly true. I loved to dance but could not do the splits. I do not understand why I even dared to go off routine and even try the splits. 2. True. During the final semester of my senior year at DePauw, I was a complete jerk and rarely went to class, even though prior I adored the English department, my classes, my teachers, and my peers. I was sort of a groupie until then but then I got cocky, drank way too much, and Lili had it with me. My roommates led the class to my bedroom door and yanked off my comforter. I showed up to class a few minutes afterward and apologized. 3. False. I dropped out of my MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University for a variety of reasons, including a family medical emergency. There may or may not be an actual Rapid City Social Club at PLU. And I totally made up this fellowship. But now I want to start the Betrand Cumberbatch Literary House. One tiny kernel of truth is that I did focus on ecocriticism and expressions of sexuality in the works of Jane Austen when I got my MA in English Literature.)