John McManus is the author of five books of fiction and the co-founder of Ordain, a decentralized marketplace for narrative art. His new collection, Famous Children, is forthcoming from Sarabande Books in 2027. His previous books include the story collections Fox Tooth Heart, Born on a Train, and Stop Breakin Down and the novel Bitter Milk. His fiction has appeared in McSweeney's, Tin House, Ploughshares, The Oxford American, and Electric Literature, among many other journals. He is the recipient of the Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Literature Award, a Creative Capital grant, a Fulbright Scholar award in South Africa, and the Fellowship of Southern Writers' New Writing Award.
McManus also works across screen, stage, and emerging technology. He is developing the television series Dominoes with Guggenheim Fellow playwright Rogelio Martinez, and the narrative/game hybrid Strange Currencies with producer Terence Michael and AI filmmaker Lauren Sieckmann. He serves on the board of directors of Physical Plant Arts, the Austin-based experimental theater company behind the Roving Reactor, a traveling exhibit designed to change the public conversation about nuclear energy. He is on the advisory board of Story Stream, an AI platform that brings developmental editing to fiction writers at a fraction of traditional cost. He has been a dramaturg on projects in development at the Atlantic Theatre Company, New York Stage & Film, The Lark, and TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, and was a fellow in dramaturgy at the Banff Playwrights Lab.
McManus earned his MFA in fiction and screenwriting from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. His residencies include Yaddo, the Dora Maar House in Ménerbes, France, the Camargo Foundation, Ucross, Djerassi, and other artist communities in the U.S. and abroad.
He teaches in Old Dominion University's MFA program in Norfolk, Virginia, where he co-directs the annual literary festival with poet Marianne Chan. He divides his time between there and New York, where he lives with his husband, the playwright and theater director Kareem Fahmy.