Meet John…

John W. Bateman writes and looks for stories from the Deep South. His work has appeared in places like The Chicago Tribune, The New Southern Fugitives, Electric Literature, Facing South, The Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly, and on the silver screen. He has a not-so-secret addiction to glitter and, contrary to his southern roots, does NOT like sweet tea. His first novel, Who Killed Buster Sparkle? (Unsolicited Press) was a 2020 Nominee in Fiction by the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters and recipient of the 2019 Screencraft Cinematic Book Award. John received his MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a 2023 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellow. He recently finished his term as a 2023-24 Watson Brown Fellow in the Southern Studies Fellowship in Arts & Letters.

Although he misses his unicorn lumberjack shack, John is living somewhere near the third star to the left.