About John Carr Walker
John Carr Walker grew up in California’s San Joaquin Valley driving tractors, changing water, and picking grapes on his family vineyard. The double-edges of manual labor and landowner privilege have shaped his fiction, essays, teaching, and life. At thirty-years-old, he exchanged dust for drizzle, and now lives in Portland, Oregon. He’s been a practicing, widely-published writer for two decades.
John’s first story collection Repairable Men (Sunnyoutside 2014) was a Small Press Distribution “Best of the Press” pick and a featured title on Late Night Library’s Debut podcast. His most recent book Spearwood, OR (Propeller Books 2026) is a collection of micro-fictions about the death and possible rebirth of a small town.
For two decades, his fiction and nonfiction has been appearing in literary journals such as Eclectica, Hippocampus, Split Lip, The Rupture, Pithead Chapel, Bodega, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, A Million Writers Award, and the Best Microfictions Anthology.
He currently writes the substack John Carr Walker Sitting In His Little Room about creativity, reading like a writer, and playing the literary long game.
Select Publications
Pretenders, Los Angeles Review
Here and There, Split Lip
Sulfur and Its Relationship to Suffering, Hippocampus
The Story of a Scar, The Rupture
John Carr Walker Sitting In His Little Room: A Substack About My Writing, Your Writing, and Stories of All Kinds
I share what I know about generating new work, rewriting and revising, editing and polishing, submitting for publication, and sustaining it all long-term. In addition to essays on craft and creativity, I’ll help you read like a writer, breaking down the moves our best authors make. And I’ll share my own short stories and creative nonfiction essays. Subscribing to John Carr Walker Sitting In His Little Room is kind of like taking a class from me, but without the homework or grades.