John Elizabeth Stintzi (JES, they/she) is an award-winning novelist, poet, cartoonist, photographer, and editor who was born and raised on a cattle farm in northwestern Ontario. Their work has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts, The Watermill Center, and Queens University, and they have been awarded the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers from the Writers’ Trust of Canada and the inaugural Sator New Works award from Two Dollar Radio. Their novel Vanishing Monuments was shortlisted for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, Junebat was shortlisted for the Raymond Souster award from the League of Canadian Poets, and My Volcano was longlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library’s 2022 Book Prize for Fiction. Their books have been (or are currently being) translated into Korean, Italian, and Spanish.

Their last novel, My Volcano, came out with Two Dollar Radio (USA) and Arsenal Pulp Press (CA/commonwealth) in March 2022, was published in Italian by Tlon in 2023, and is forthcoming in Spanish in 2024. It is the winner of the Sator New Works award, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, and was named a Best Fiction Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, New York Public Library, and Independent Book Review (among others).

In September of 2024, JES will release their third book of fiction, a collection of short stories (featuring illustrations) called Bad Houses with Arsenal Pulp Press, as well as their mini-comic The Children of Gulga-Krü (Staggerhead).

JES’s short stories and poems have been published throughout the US and Canada, in venues such as Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and Best Canadian Poetry. They are also the author of the poetry chapbooks: Flamingos in the Greenhouse (Staggerhead, fall 2023), Plough Forward the Higgs Field (Rahila’s Ghost, fall 2019), and The Machete Tourist (knife | fork | book, spring 2018). They currently live with their wife Melanie Pierce—as well as a terrier named Grendel—in Kansas City, and edit poetry for Contemporary Verse 2. They also edit books freelance, and have edited award-winning books for Book*hug (fiction) and Arsenal Pulp Press (poetry). Their illustrations and photography have been featured or exhibited in Short Story Long, Plug Gallery, F-Stop Magazine, The New Territory magazine, and the HR Block Artspace.

You can sign-up for JES’s free newsletter—as well as support JES’s work—on Substack here!

Follow JES on Twitter and Instagram at @jestintzi, on Facebook, or send an email to john.elizabeth.stintzi[at]gmail.com (or through the form below). For booking information, please see Booking!

JES’s work is not currently represented, so all inquiries about their literary work can be directed to them.

If you are looking for author photos and/or bios, check out my Press Kit.