has won the Yankee Magazine award for fiction, the Transatlantic Review/Henfield Foundation Award, a PEN Syndicated Fiction award, and a Guggenheim
Fellowship. His novel Louisiana Power & Light was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, 1994.

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He is also the author of a short story collection, The Way That Water Enters Stone, three chapbooks, Lethe, Cupid, Time and Love; Well Enough Alone; and I Will Eat a Piece of the Roof and You Can Eat the Window; the novel, Love Warps the Mind a Little, also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, 1997; the novel Deep in the Shade of Paradise; the story collection Johnny Too Bad, the novel Requiem, Mass., and most recently, the novel My Daring Boy. He is one of the thirteen authors of the mystery novel, Naked Came the Manatee. He has also written six books on the craft of fiction writing: The Lie That Tells a Truth: a Guide to Writing Fiction, Is Life Like This: a Guide to Writing Your First Novel in Six Months, What Would Chekhov Do?, Flash!: Writing the Very Short Story, Storyville: An Illustrated Guide to Writing Fiction, and What Would Chekhov Do?: Revised Second Edition. He is the editor of the anthologies Blue Christmas, Holiday Stories for the Rest of Us., Having a Wonderful Time with Michael Hettich and Cynthia Chinelly, Everything Is Broke, I’m the One with the Blue Cap On. Poems by Jeffrey Knapp. His story “Johnny Too Bad” is included in New Stories of the South: Best of 2003.

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His story “The Timing of Unfelt Smiles” appeared in the anthology Miami Noir and in Best American Mystery Stories 2007. His story “The Cross-Eyed Bear” appeared in Boston Noir and in Best American Mystery Stories 2010. His short screenplay, "The Freezer Jesus," won the 2001 Grand Valley State Screenwriting competition and was made into a movie directed by John Harper Philbin. The movie of his screenplay To Live and Die in Dixie (with Donald Papy) was released in April 2008. His monologue, “The Freezer Jesus,” was produced as part of an evening of monologues, Native Tongues, at Le Chat Noir Theater, New Orleans, June-September 2000. His full-length play Trailerville was produced by the Blue Heron Theater in New York in 2005. His play Liv & Di was produced by the Worcester County Light Opera Company. John grew up in Worcester, Mass and received his MFA from the University of Arkansas. He has lived and taught in Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, and Florida. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University in Miami and lives in Dania Beach.