Clint McCown

Clint McCown is the only two-time recipient of the American Fiction Prize. Besides his most recent book, Mr. Potato Head vs. Freud: Lessons on the Craft of Writing Fiction, he has published Music for Hard Times: New & Selected Stories; four novels (The Member-Guest; War Memorials; The Weatherman; and Haints), and six volumes of poems (Labyrinthiad; Sidetracks; Wind Over Water; Dead Languages; Total Balance Farm; and The Dictionary of Unspellable Noises: New & Selected Poems 1975-2018). He has also received the Midwest Book Award, the Society of Midland Authors Award, the S. Mariella Gable Prize, the Germaine Breé Book Award, an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers designation, and a Distinction in Literature citation from the Wisconsin Library Association. In journalism, he received an Associated Press Award for Documentary Excellence for his investigations of organized crime. He has worked as a screenwriter for Warner Bros. and a Creative Consultant for HBO television. He is a former principal actor with the National Shakespeare Company, and several of his plays have been produced. He has edited a number of literary journals, including the Beloit Fiction Journal, which he founded in 1984. He teaches in the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University and in the low-residency MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Clint McCown, the only two-time winner of the American Fiction Prize, delivers ten powerful essays on writing fiction, from getting started to dealing with writer's block. “As its title should suggest, it’s impossible to read Clint McCown’s Mr. Potato Head vs. Freud without laughing. McCown’s wit makes this the rarest of books on the craft of fiction: one that is as entertaining as it is instructive.” (David Jauss) “Plainspoken, heartfelt, hilarious and absolutely whip-smart, Mr. Potato Head vs. Freud is the book on writing we've needed for a long time.” (Bret Lott)

Sample Poem

Eagle and Turtle

When the eagle drops the turtle
from a great height,
it knows what it’s doing.
That’s how it makes a living.
The turtle will land hard,
preferably on rocks,
and split apart, allowing
easy access to the meat.

But what what does the turtle
make of it all?
Falling from the sky
outstrips its understanding.
As far as any turtle knows,
gravity is harmless,
a slow pull toward lethargy,
a simple means of staying put.
Shell-shattering force
is a mystery of the afterlife,
a puzzle inherited by blood,
a secret text hidden among
the picked-over remains
of the fallen.

In that moment of release
does the turtle think
it’s free
to get on with its life?
Is it pleased by
the weightless downward rush,
relieved
to have slipped the grip

of whatever it was
that snatched it up
from its sunny slant of stone
on the warm bank
beside the water?

Is the last thing it feels
a surge of joy
as it accelerates
headlong toward
what it has known only
as the safety of its home?

And what if it somehow lives,
landing lightly
on a cushion of thick brush,
of slicing edgewise
back into the mossy pond?

What facts of the miraculous
can it pass along
to others of its kind
when there are no others
of its kind?
Experience speaks a language
all its own.
Survivors are both
blessed and cursed,
and have to live alone
with what they know.

Who among the ordinary
could believe in
talons from the sky,
the terrifying rapture
of being taken up,
the ecstasy of flight,
the freedom of the great fall,
the shock of reuniting
with the rising earth?

Who among the innocent
could comprehend
the darkness
of the turtle’s dream,
the one that now
casts its shadow
over all remaining
moments in the sun?

          from Total Balance Farm
          and The Dictionary of Unspellable Noises:  New & Selected Poems, 1975-2018