By Colby Smith
Staff Writer

Many students enroll in the Writers’ House with the dream of someday getting their work published. Senior Meg Eden is already making that dream a reality.

Only 21 years old, Eden is already publishing two books of poetry in June, “Rotary Phones & Facebook” and “Your Son”, available from Dancing Girl Press and NFSPS.

“Rotary Phones & Facebook” is a chapbook of nearly 40 poems. She likes the title because of the contrast between the two objects. Eden thought of the title after a day of antique shopping with her mother and coming across a rotary phone.

Many of the poems in the chapbook focus on her relationship with her mother.  “We both come from different time periods,” she said. “Different worlds, almost.”

To compliment those poems, “Your Son” is a book of 10 poems about her relationship with her father.

“I’m an only child,” Eden said. “And my father is a woodworker. I would help him out with things that are usually a guy’s tasks, so the poems are about my need to fulfill the ‘son role’ and finding my place as a daughter.”

Eden is also working on a young adult fiction novel called “Joannie Dark” about a young girl who starts a chess club at her school. She has been working on the novel since her sophomore year in high school and has received feedback from editors.

She found an agent by looking at writing magazines in the library and emailing a lot of them.

Eden hopes to continue writing after graduation, either on her own or through an MFA program. She also hopes to continue to work in neuroscience, one of her majors.

She came to the University of Maryland and the Writers’ House as a junior, after spending two years at Anne Arundel Community College (AACC). She is majoring in cognitive science and written communication.

“I like exploring everything,” she said. “I didn’t want to just be an English major. I wanted some external influences.”

Since coming to this university, she has wasted no time in becoming involved in the campus. Eden has been a vocalist for the Gamers Symphony Orchestra for her two years on campus and is currently the vice president of the chess club.

She believes there are positive and negative aspects about the literary community on campus.

“I criticize it because I’m excited about publication,” she said. “There ought to be more facilitation of the publication aspect. Professors just tell you, ‘Just wait. Don’t rush.’”

Eden said the Writers’ House is one of the beacons of literary activity on campus. It was one of the reasons she decided to come to this university after spending two years at AACC. She found support for her wide range of extracurricular interests on campus and her work has appeared in Stylus.

She is always working on new projects.

“I always have a bunch of projects simultaneously, just becuase I can’t focus on one thing at a time,” Eden said. “My biggest projects at the moment are a poetry collection about religious persecution and sex abuse called “The Plastic Bones”, and another young adult novel, called “Lotus Spaulding’s Guide to Life.”

You can buy Eden’s poetry collections on her blog when they’re published.