“Jason Schossler is setting himself the task of writing the poetry of his time and place in an America that has replaced mythologies with the collective unconscious of prime time cable television — Star Wars, Love Boat, Lois and Clark.”

— Daniel Tobin

Jason Schossler is the 2010 winner of the Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Prize. The award is sponsored by Bona Fide Books, and included the publication of his first book of poetry, Mud Cakes. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Schossler is the recipient of the 2009 Edwin Markham Poetry Prize and the 2010 Emerging Writer award from Grist: A Journal for Writers.

In 2010 he also received honorable mention in the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers, and was a finalist for the Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press 2010 Poetry Award.

Schossler’s poems and stories have appeared, among other places, in The Sun, North American Review, Rattle, Poet Lore, The South Carolina Review, Roanoke Review, The Florida Review, Chrysalis Reader, and The Antioch Review, where his poem, “Between Jobs”, was nominated by the editors for the Best New Poets 2010 anthology.

He has been awarded four fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, as well as fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, and Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus in Germany. He teaches writing at Temple University and Ursinus College, and also works as a freelance legal journalist for Thomson Reuters. He lives in Philadephia, Pa.