Bio

James Janko is the author of three award-winning novels. He learned to write on Alcatraz Island National Park where he worked alone as a nightwatchman from 1979 to 1992. He read N. Scott Momaday, Maxine Hong Kingston, James Baldwin, García Lorca, Louise Erdrich, and many others. Over the years, word by word, he fell in love with language and learned to write. 

Janko’s awards include: the Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts Press for his novel, The Wire-Walker; the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award for the Novel for The Clubhouse Thief; The Northern California Book Award and The Association of Asian American Studies Prose Award for Buffalo Boy and Geronimo. His novel, What We Don’t Talk About (University of Wisconsin Press), tells the story of his hometown in rural Illinois.

Janko’s short fiction has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Sun, The Iowa Review, and Eureka Literary Magazine, among others. His story, “Fallujah in a Mirror”, won the Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award. Janko’s experience as a combat medic in the Vietnam War informs much of his work.