My Own Good Daemon
Mike's essay collection, My Own Good Daemon, was shortlisted for the 2026 International Voices in Creative Nonfiction competition at Vine Leaves Press. Combining the intimacy of Andre Dubus Jr.’s meditations with the inquiry of Alain de Botton’s works, the book examines a life through the lens of a liberal arts education that Mike learned to appreciate more once he applied it to his own experience. Over the course of it, he follows a recipe for serenity from a country singer back to the Stoics, and he dissolves a teacher’s late-August dread with the help of Existentialists. He spots a Nietzschean will to power in his son’s wiffleball games, and he observes how the striking similarities between his father and Milton’s Satan make each of them more sympathetic figures. An evening of angling invites reflections on the faith manifested in New Testament fish tales, and a children’s song conjures thoughts on happiness from Aristotle, Victor Frankl, and the Buddha. These explorations and others combine to make him more aware of the world and more at home in it.
