John W. Bateman writes and looks for stories from the Deep South, sometimes mixing and blurring the concept of image and text. His work has appeared in places like The New Southern Fugitives, The Chicago Tribune, Electric Literature, Timber!, Facing South, The Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly, and on the silver screen. He has a secret addiction to glitter and, contrary to his southern roots, does NOT like sweet tea. His first novel, Who Killed Buster Sparkle? (Unsolicited Press) was a 2020 Nominee in Fiction by the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters and recipient of the 2019 Screencraft Cinematic Book Award. Although he misses living in his Mississippi unicorn lumberjack shack, John is currently a 2023 MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.