With over thirty years of leadership in social action, ecumenism and liturgical renewal, Vernon Schmid is a prize winning poet, novelist and journalist. Born in Parsons, Kansas, he was a construction foreman, wrangler and trail guide, rough stock rodeo competitor, rock-a-billy singer and bandleader, community theater director, horse trainer and riding instructor, newspaper reporter and editor, radio newscaster and disc jockey before entering the United Methodist ministry in 1972. |
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He has served rural, suburban and urban churches, as well as a university campus minister and denominational executive. Educated at Labette Community College (A.A.), Pittsburg State University, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Blackstone School of Law (J.D.), Saint Paul School of Theology (M.Div.), Mansfield College of Oxford University, the Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth, and the Graduate Theological Foundation (D.Min), he has been an adjunct professor at colleges in MO, MD and CO teaching English, literature, playwriting, poetry, history and business law.
A fellow of the Graduate Theological Foundation, he was formerly a member of the National Council of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and a vice-president of the Methodist Federation for Social Action. He has been a member of fact-finding missions to Northern Ireland, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Mexico. Active in protests against nuclear weapons and other issues of the day, he has been arrested numerous times.
A popular speaker and workshop leader, he has addressed secular, educational and religious gatherings across the country. Listed in The International Who’s Who in Poetry, Who’s Who in the Midwest, Who’s Who in Religion, International Dictionary of Biography, Who’s Who in the East and The Dictionary of American Poets and Fiction Writers, he is a recipient of a Writers Digest Poetry Prize, Kansas East Conference World Peace Award, Associated Church Press Award for editorship United Methodist Reporter for Eastern Pennsylvania, Allen Ginsberg National Poetry Competition Honorable Mention, Peninsula Conference Commission on Religion and Race Lowan S. Pitts Award for Contribution to Race Relations in Community, Peninsula-Delaware Conference Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concern Award and a Northwoods Press Poetry Prize.
A prolific writer, he is author of a dozen novels, poetry collections, plays and non-fiction books including Otium Sanctum: Poems for the Journey Toward; Westering: New and Selected Poems, 1974-2004, Showdown at Chalk Creek, Houlihans and Horse Sense, Seven Days of the Dog, Kissing Moctezuma's Serpent and Hog Killers and Other Poems. His monthly column “Horse Sense” in the National Foundation Quarter Horse Journal reaching readers in all fifty states and twenty four foreign countries.
Over a thousand of his articles, feature stories, poems, book reviews, and columns have been published in more than a hundred newspapers and periodicals in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain. Many of his published writings are collected at both Drew University’s Methodist Library and Labette Community College.
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