John Artenstein is an author of fiction, poetry, and contemporary music. His debut novel, Oblivion [2023 Liminal Books], received positive criticism for its innovations of the close-third person point of view and its deconstructive humor; and his debut collection of experimental short fiction and lyric, Recent Words [2017 Pico], blurred the novelties of voice and genre. He is also the composer of more than a dozen collections of alternative-folk and rock music, most recently The Plagues [2022] and Return to the Underground [forthcoming 2025].

John earned his MFA in fiction at The New School in New York City. His research features contemporary long and short fiction; the lyric; literatures of antiquity of the near-Middle East; twentieth century lyric poetry at the intersection of folk music; multimodal writing processes and instruction; sound studies; and cross-genre prose-poetry. He has written and edited for The Bridge and Odyssey among various publications; and is currently fiction editor of Ocean State Review and host of the Snarkitects salon for prose.