Maggie Estep

Maggie Estep (March 20, 1963 – February 12, 2014) was an American writer and poet most well known for coming to prominence during the height of the spoken word and poetry slam performance rage. She published seven books and released two spoken word albums: No More Mr. Nice Girl and Love is a Dog From Hell.

Estep was born in 1963 in Summit, New Jersey. As a poet, she emerged in the early 1990s when grunge was the height of fashion and her "direct, aggressive and uncompromisingly modern" poetry was highly accessible.

Estep appeared on MTV's Spoken Word Unplugged, PBS's The United States of Poetry, and most recently on Season 3 of HBO's Def Poetry. Her video for her spoken word track "Hey Baby" received moderate rotation on MTV and was highlighted on MTV's Beavis & Butt-head. She also contributed vocals to two songs on Recoil's 1997 album Unsound Methods.

Estep went on to write many novels, including Diary of an Emotional Idiot, the Ruby Murphy mystery trilogy, Gargantuan, Hex and Flamethrower, and Alice Fantastic. Hex was named New York Times Notable Book for 2003. She had, for several years, been at work on The Angelmakers, a novel about 19th Century female gangsters and the founding of animal rights.

Estep suffered a heart attack on February 10, 2014 and died from complications of it on February 12, 2014 in Albany, New York at age 50.

• No More Mr. Nice Girl (1994, NuYo/Imago)
• Love is a Dog From Hell (1997, Mouth Almighty/Mercury)

• Skid Row Wine, on compilation Kicks, Joy, Darkness: A Tribute to Jack Kerouac (1997)

• "Hey Baby" (1994)
• "Vicious" (1997, dir. Steve Buscemi)