The Weight of Love

<p>Pat Schneider was born in the Ozark mountains of Missouri where she became intimate with fossils creek bed grasshoppers and box turtles. After a search for work took her single mother to St. Louis from age ten Pat lived in tenements and in an orphanage until she was given a scholarship to college. Those early experiences deeply influenced her writing and fueled her passion for those who have been denied voice through poverty and other <br />misfortunes.</p><p>Pat’s books poetry plays and libretti have been praised by the most prestigious publications and authors in America:  <em>The New York Times</em> the <em>Library Journal</em> the <em>Atlanta Journal Small Press Magazine St. Louis Dispatch </em>the<em> North Dakota Review Oprah Magazine Vanity Fair</em> the <em>North Dakota Quarterly</em> the <em>Kentucky Monthly</em> the <em>Bellingham Review</em> the <em>Louisville Times</em> and many others.</p><p>Peter Elbow said that Pat Schneider is “the wisest teacher of writing I know.”  Julia Cameron author of <em>The Right to Write</em> and <em>The Artist’s Way</em> noted that Pat is “a fuse lighter. Her work is gentle playful brilliant and revolutionary” and Janet Burroway author of <em>Writing Fiction</em> notes that Pat’s work is “heartening and practical a rich variety . . . that celebrates both difference and difficulty as the gifts they are.  </p>