Description: "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.' (Brett Lott)"--
Brief description: Clint McCown is the only two-time recipient of the American Fiction Prize, he has also received the Midwest Book Award, the Sister Mariella Gable Prize, the Society of Midland Authors Award, the Germaine Breé Book Award, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, 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. He has published four novels, six collections of poems, and one collection of stories, Music for Hard Times: New & Selected Stories. His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in over seventy-five national journals and magazines. He has edited a number of literary magazines, including Indiana Review and the Beloit Fiction Journal, which he founded. He currently teaches in the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University and in the Vermont College of Fine Arts low-residency MFA program. In 2021 he was inducted into the Writers Hall of Fame at Wake Forest University.
Review Quotes:
Plainspoken, heartfelt, hilarious and absolutely whip-smart, Mr. Potato Head vs. Freud is the book on writing we've needed for a long time. At once contrarian and spot-on, this clearheaded guide never once loses sight of why we write: to reach out, as McCown so eloquently puts it, to the minds and hearts of our readers.
-Bret Lott, author of Jewel and The Hunt Club
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. And boy, is it instructive. It's quite simply the wisest, most succinct, and most comprehensive overview of the ins and outs of writing fiction that I've ever read. How I wish it had existed when I first started writing; it could have saved me years of trial and (mostly) error.
-David Jauss, author of On Writing Fiction and Glossolalia: New & Selected Stories