
Don't Quit Your Day Job
Description
Don't Quit Your Day Job: The Adventures of a Midlist Author, is a memoir recounting the five-decade writing career of Michael Fedo, whose books have not attained best-seller status, despite receiving mostly favorable reviews in publications such as The New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, among others. Rather than complaining, however, the author points out that while few authors earn a middle-class income from writing, aspiring writers can carve out a satisfying niche through diligence. Rich in anecdotes, the author encounters celebrities: James Stewart, Cloris Leachman; the late Lorenzo Music, Richard Wilber, and Harry Golden. He also tells of the New York Times assistant financial editor who didn't know what Workers Compensation was, magazine fact checkers who questioned details in his satirical fiction. This book should engage general readers curious about the literary life of a workaday writer, as well as aspiring authors-in-waiting.
More details
Person
A Duluth, Minnesota native, Michael Fedo is a graduate of the University of Minnesota--Duluth, and taught 10th and 11th grade English at Duluth Denfeld High School, coaching tennis and football for two years before attending graduate school at Kent State University in Ohio, where he received an M. A. in broadcasting and theater. He spent the next thirty-two years teaching at colleges in Ohio, New York, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. During his more than five-decade writing career, he has published hundreds of articles and essays in The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, Reader's Digest, McCall's, Runner's World, America, and elsewhere. His short stories have appeared in Gray's Sporting Journal, American Way, America West Airlines Magazine, North American Review, December, and in many other literary quarterlies. He is a former book reviewer for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and for ten years taught writing at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. His essays have been broadcast on Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Florida Public Radio. Don't Quit Your Day Job: The Adventures of a Midlist Author is his tenth book. Please visit www.michaelfedo.com
Content
Preface
Authorities and Experts May Be Wrong
Finding the Funny
Breaking Into Print
The Story Behind A Story
A Look at Characters
Hitting the New York Times
Stringing Along: The Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times
Breaking Into Books
Three Incarnations of a Book
About Garrison Keillor
Clorios Leachman and Major Leaguers
With Donald McCaig in Highland County
Good Editors (They Liked My Stuff)
The Changing Landscape
Three More Books
A Look at Non-Profit Presses
A Poetic Venture and Associative Agnosia
A Writer's Rooms
Why Write?
Addendum
About the Author