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.
Teaching & Speaking Engagements
John holds a BA in English from Fresno Pacific University and an MFA in Fiction from Pacific University Oregon. In addition, he studied writing at Kenyon College, the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and was a Summer Fishtrap Fellow in 2012. He taught English, Humanities, and International Baccalaureate classes at Kerman and Fresno High Schools, and is a licensed teacher in the states of California and Oregon.
Since leaving public education for higher ed, he’s taught Composition, Literature, Literary Magazine Production, First Year Seminars, Interactive Fiction, and Fiction at Pacific University and the University of Portland, where he was honored with The 2025 Dean’s Award for Outstanding Teaching by an Adjunct Faculty Member.
In addition to classroom teaching, John has run writing workshops for populations as diverse as middle schoolers and retirees. He’s presented talks to community groups of all experience levels up and down the west coast of the United States, in bookstores, community centers, churches, and private homes.
He’s available to talk, teach, and coach on the subjects of writing, reading like a writer, and sustaining creative practices long term.