Dan Schneider (writer) - Cosmoetica

Cosmoetica

In recent years, Schneider has focused his energy on his website, Cosmoetica, founded in 2001. Independent website ranking services rank Cosmoetica as one of the most popular literary websites in the world. Essays and reviews published on the site have been reprinted or referenced in a number of books, including The Creative Writing MfA Handbook., Contemporary Fiction: The Novel Since 1990, and other books. Poet Al Rocheleau said that the site has "a clearly anti-establishment take on the academic poetry scene, as well as fearless, brilliant assessments of many poets, including the famous, with which you may or may not agree."

Schneider has used the non-commercial site to promote his view of poetry and literature, routinely condemning the works of those he sees as bad writers (such as Robert Bly) and praising the works of poets and writers he sees as neglected. Included in this last group are such writers as African-American poet James Emanuel and essayist Loren Eiseley. While the website started off focusing on literature, Schneider expanded it to cover topics like the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, UFOs, and the current Iraq War.

In 2003, Schneider and Arthur Durkee co-hosted an Internet radio program called Omniversica, which interviewed such diverse persons as poet James Emanuel, scientist Lynn Margulis, writer Dorion Sagan, actor/poet George Dickerson, director Josh Becker, astrophysicist and musician Fiorella Terenzi, surgeon and writer Leonard Shlain, author Howard Bloom, and filmmaker Godfrey Reggio.

In 2007, Schneider inaugurated The Dan Schneider Interview series on Cosmoetica. Amongst notable writers interviewed are novelist Charles R. Johnson, philosopher Daniel Dennett, journalist Pete Hamill, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, the "first in-depth interview with poet James Emanuel", paleontologist Jack Horner, essayist and film critic Phillip Lopate, zoologist Desmond Morris, journalist Charlie LeDuff, psi writer Brad Steiger, nature essayist Edward Hoagland, novelist Daniel Wallace, and actor/poet George Dickerson.

Schneider has also written a multi-volume memoir titled True Life. Sections of this memoir, along with other of his writings, have been published in a number of print and online magazines, such as The Manifest, 10,000 Monkeys, and the Dublin Quarterly.