Welcome!
I publish under both my real name, John Griswold, and the pen name Oronte Churm. My novel, A Democracy of Ghosts, is a ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year and won Southern Illinois University’s Delta Award for distinguished writing and the Eric Hoffer Award. Click here to buy it at Amazon, or get more details below.
My narrative nonfiction book, a brief history of the town where my novel is set, covers decades of mayhem in the Illinois county still known as “Bloody” Williamson. It traces the origins of deep feelings in one segment of the working class in America and explains events that led the entire nation to focus its gaze on this small Midwestern city, deemed “the most radical” of its time, more than once.
Recently I also had an essay in W.W. Norton’s The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 3, edited by Lee Gutkind. And an essay I published in Brevity was listed as notable in the Best American Nonrequired Reading, edited by Dave Eggers.
Thanks for coming!