Mike Schneider began writing during the Vietnam War when, while serving at an Air Force base in Ohio, he published an anti-war “underground” newspaper. He has practiced law, worked as a science writer, won awards for magazine writing, and written book reviews and essays on culture for several publications. For a series of essays on art & politics in the Thomas Merton Center’s New People, he received a 2003-04 Creative Artists Stipend in Arts Commentary from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Three times nominated for the Pushcart Prize, his poems appear in many literary journals, several anthologies and three chapbooks. He received the 2012 Editors Award from The Florida Review and the 2016 Robert Phillips Prize from Texas Review Press. The Hungry Hill Writing Group in West Cork, Ireland awarded Schneider’s work second prize in its Poets Meet Politics 2022 International Open and hosted him for a reading in Castletownbere, Ireland. In 2023 he published his full-length collection Spring Mills (Ragged Sky). He lives in Pittsburgh’s historic South Side neighborhood.