Tony Kordyban
The nun who taught 5th Grade Arithmetic and doubled as the school’s Guidance Counselor gave his mother the disheartening assessment. “Tony is a good student, but he’ll never amount to anything. He’s a writer.” His parents did their best to overcome this character flaw. His mother read him bios of his favorite authors in the Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia. She’d say, “See? Edgar Allen Poe was found dead in gutter. And Hemingway blew his own face off with a shotgun.”
It didn’t take. He loved reading, and writing was even more fun. He learned to craft stories and to draw by studying the classics — Spider-man comics, MAD magazine, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Shel Silverstein.
His philosophy of literature is to not take it too seriously. Whether you’re reading Dostoevsky or Dr. Seuss, if you’re enjoying it — you’re getting it!