John Elizabeth Stintzi (My Volcano) On Writing A Doomscroll Novel And Finding Humanity In The Absurd

Origin Story

JES (John Elizabeth Stintz)i is a non-binary and trans writer, educator, and visual artist who grew up on a cattle farm in northwestern Ontario. Their work has been awarded the 2019 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, and The Malahat Review’s 2019 Long Poem Prize. Their writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Best Canadian Poetry, and many others. JES is the author of the novels My Volcano and Vanishing Monuments, as well as the poetry collection Junebat. They live with their wife in the United States.

We talked with them about how they captured the feeling of doomscrolling in a novel form, and how they found ways to ground the absurd in the deeply human.

Hosted by Phillip Russell and Ben Thorp

You can follow JES here.

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Cover art and website design by Melody Hirsch

Origin Story original score by Ryan Hopper