My short story collection, Half-Lives was chosen by Matt Bell as the 2023 winner of The Rising Writer Prize and will be published spring 2024 by Autumn House Press.
My story, “InventEd” was selected by Jonathan Lethem as the winner of BOMB’s 2023 Fiction Contest.
I am the author of one poetry book and two poetry chapbooks.
I have also published short fiction, poems and creative non-fiction in a wide variety of publications and anthologies.
I teach creative writing online to adults.
I work as a freelance editor of literary fiction and nonfiction.
I am a college essay coach.
For more details, visit the About page or explore the menu above.
Books
Half-Lives
Autumn House Books, March 2024
Amid heightened restrictions about what women can and cannot do with their bodies, Lynn Schmeidler’s debut short story collection, Half-Lives, is a humane, absurd, and timely collection of narratives centering on women’s bodies and psyches. Playful and experimental, these sixteen stories explore girlhood, sexuality, motherhood, identity, and aging in a world where conventional rules of societal norms, narrative, gender, and sometimes even physics do not apply.
History of Gone
Veliz Books, 2018 | Shortlisted for the 2016 Sexton Poetry Prize; Finalist for the Anhinga-Robert Dana Prize for Poetry.
History of Gone is a collection of poems inspired by the life and unsolved disappearance of Barbara Newhall Follett, a once-famous child prodigy writer who disappeared at the age of 25 in 1939.
Wrack Lines
Grayson Books, 2017 | Finalist for the Comstock Review Jessie Bryce Niles Chapbook Contest; Finalist for the Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize.
Wrack Lines is a chapbook of poems on the related subjects of infatuation, unrequited love, idealization, longing, projection and lust.
Curiouser & Curiouser
Grayson Books, 2013 | Winner of the Grayson Books Chapbook Prize.
Curiouser & Curiouser is a chapbook of poems exploring selfhood and identity through the lens of rare neurological disorders.