A. L. Schmidt is the pen name of Sean G. Schmidt...that would be me. I was born in Omaha and then spent my formative years on a small farm in south east Nebraska. I moved to a small town in Washington State at age seven but was lucky enough to return to family farm each summer through my high school years. To this day, I still feel a strong connection to the poeple and place where I grew up so this blog is a way for me both share my writing and reflect back on my early life that in many ways I have never left behind. I am still wheatfield bound.
Why A. L. Schmidt? A few reasons:
1. One of my favorite authors is Karen Blixen who went by the name Isak Dinesen. It convinced me that pen names were cool at a young age.
2. Later I wrote one of my first poems, "Like Clouds Around the World", while traveling on a local train in Russia. I was given the nickname 'Sasha' while an exchange student to St. Petersburg in 1988. Sasha is a diminutive of the name Alexander. Add to that Russian naming conventions that would give me the patronymic name Larryovich since my Father's name was Larry. Put it all together and you get Alexander Larryovich Schmidt. So there you have it...the mystery behind A. L. Schmidt.
3. Not sure why but having a pen name seems to let my creativity flow a little more freely.
