Background
Schneider was born in 1965 to an unmarried Minnesota mother. Given up for adoption in New York City, Schneider grew up with a working-class family in the Glendale-Ridgewood neighborhoods of Queens.
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Dan Schneider
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In one reported instance, Schneider attended a poetry reading by Robert Bly.
Career
According to his memoir and press accounts, at age six Schneider witnessed a murder, the first of many. During high school, Schneider was a gang member. In 1999, the alternative newspaper City Pages printed a cover story about Schneider focused on his attempts to change what he saw as the incestuous nature of the Twin Cities" poetry scene.
Many readers, including established poets from the area, responded to the article, with most of the poets condemning Schneider and most general readers praising his honesty.
In recent years, Schneider has focused his energy on his website,, founded in 2001. Ranking.com ranked in the top half million literary websites.
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 First Rate (at Lloyd's) 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 wrote 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.
In late 2006 Schneider further expanded his website to include an all film subsite called Cinemension. Schneider has published his film reviews in a number of online publications. His reviews are also aggregated on Rotten Tomatoes.
Schneider"s film criticism has been praised by Roger Ebert, who called him a "considerable critic".
