---

Fun facts:

• I once had a summer job playing Garby, the recycling mascot of Indian River County, Florida. I dressed up in a big foam garbage can outfit with a smiley face and foam hightops and passed out recycling brochures in local grocery stores.
• I am an avid disc golf (or “frisbee golf”) player. I play tournaments and sometimes win. I’ve thrown an ace (or “hole-in-one”) almost 200 times. On the disc golf course, I’m known as “Dr. Disc.”
• My favorite book as a kid was Where The Wild Things Are. I also loved monster movies and couldn’t get enough of Frankenstein, Dracula, Godzilla, and all the classic monsters. I still love monsters and scary movies.
• To get inspired to write, I hop on my e-bike and ride to the coffee shop for take-out iced coffee. I think of that journey as my portal to Writing Land. I set my iced coffee on my desk and get to work.
• I love Hawaiian shirts and can’t resist a good one when I see it at a thrift shop. When I went to college in Virginia, I used to wear Hawaiian shirts on snowy days to make myself feel warm.
• I once won a ghost story contest. My prize was a mountain bike.
• Most people call me John, but when I was a kid, my parents and grandparents called me “John-John,” which made me think there were two of me. That’s where my pen name “JJ” comes from.

---

Short bio:

JJ Fleming is the “marvelously inventive” and “highly entertaining” author of the middle grade novel Wonders of Shadow Key as well as books and stories for adults (writing as John Henry Fleming). He directs the creative writing program at the University of South Florida, where he founded the literary magazine Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art. He’s a two-time recipient of Florida Literature Fellowships and winner of the International Book Award.

---

Long bio:

As a kid in Florida, JJ Fleming grew up watching catfish walk through his front yard while gators sunbathed out back. Sometimes he watched old horror movies on TV with his body in the kitchen and his head in the living room. In elementary school, he spent hours reading and staring at Where The Wild Things Are and d’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths. He lived in a town called Atlantis and intentionally got lost in the woods whenever possible. His career as a fiction writer began with telling his friends weird stories on the bus. Eventually, he wrote them down. He spent one summer mowing grass on a golf course. He spent another summer dressed up in a foam garbage can named Garby, passing out recycling literature at grocery stores. When he goes to the beach, he digs a hole to make sure there are no Sand Snakes lurking below. For fun, he throws Frisbees into baskets from long distance.

Writing as John Henry Fleming, he has published novels and stories for adults. His first novel, The Legend of the Barefoot Mailman, was called “winningly satiric” by The New York Times, “marvelously inventive” by Booklist, and “an engrossing and highly entertaining tale” by Library Journal. Horror novelist Peter Straub, summing up Fleming’s illustrated bestiary, Fearsome Creatures of Florida, wrote, “Like Where the Wild Things Are, Fearsome Creatures reminds us why we obsessed over monsters as children.” The Book I Will Write, his novel-in-emails about a publisher and a would-be writer, was originally published a chapter at a time as online readers made plot suggestions. Songs for the Deaf, his short story collection, was called “a joyful, deranged, endlessly surprising book” by writer Karen Russell. Book reviewers have compared his work to that of Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, and George Saunders. A Sun Sentinel reviewer called the stories in Songs for the Deaf “campfire tales from the state’s coolest scout leader.”

JJ Fleming would be very happy to serve as Coolest Scout Leader for America’s weirdest state. He’s been awarded two Literature Fellowships from the State of Florida and an International Book Award for Songs for the Deaf, which was also short-listed for CLMP’s Firecracker Award. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from The University of Louisiana-Lafayette, a Master’s in Creative Writing from The University of Southern Mississippi, and a BA in Psychology from The University of Virginia. He eventually set down his smiley-faced garbage can and foam hightops to teach others how to write good stories at the University of South Florida, where he also founded the literary magazine Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art, which has been celebrating the best in Florida writing and art for the past 20 years. One issue of Saw Palm is made entirely of postcards and includes a postcard written by the wonderful children’s book writer Judy Blume. Every day, he rides his e-bike to the local coffee shop to order an iced mocha that supercharges his afternoon writing. He loves monsters and creatures and storms and all things weird and ridiculous. He lives in Tampa with his wife, Julie, an elementary school librarian.

Wonders of Shadow Key is his first book for children, and he hopes to write many more.

---

Downloadable Headshots: