The first reviews are coming in for Mud Cakes, and one of my favorites is from Jendi Reiter, Vice President of WinningWriters.com, who has listed it as one of the best reads of the year. Hailed by Writer’s Digest as one of the “101 Best Websites for Writers” for for the past seven years, WinningWriters.com previously awarded my poem, “For Wile E. Coyote, Apetitius Giganticus” Honorable Mention in the 2010 international Wergle Flomp Free Poetry Contest.
Here’s what Ms. Reiter has to say:
Winner of the 2010 Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Prize, this quietly powerful autobiographical collection chronicles a Midwestern Gen-X boyhood, where exciting dreams of Star Wars and movie monsters give way to the more drab and painful struggles of his parents’ divorce, and the losing battle of his Catholic conscience against teenage lust. Schossler narrates the essential facts of a moment that stands in for an entire relationship, allowing the reader to make the connections that his childhood self couldn’t see.
So cool to know Jendi and the staff at WinningWriters are fans. As for “Wile E. Coyote”? A reworked version of it is showing up next in an upcoming all-fiction edition of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader series: Flush Fiction. I find this a deeply satisfying honor. I mean, the “Leaves of Grass” is a good read. Don’t get me wrong. But do people take it into the can?