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.
About the Author: 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
