John Brantingham is a recipient of New York State’s Council on the Arts Grant for 2024 and was the first poet laureate of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and the writer-in-residence at the dA Center for the Arts in Pomona, California. He is a retired professor of Creative writing at Mt. San Antonio College where he coordinated the creative writing program. He currently teaches classes online and at the Chautauqua Institution.

His work has appeared in hundreds of magazines including Writer’s Almanac, The Journal, Tears in the Fence, and Confrontation. He has been nominated for ten Pushcart Prizes and won a spot in The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022 and was a semifinalist in The Best Small Fictions 2018. He was a fiction editor for The Chiron Review.

He is the co-creator of the San Gabriel Valley Literary Festival and the Valley Poets Reading Series which has featured poets and writers from around the world and seeks to create a vibrant literary community for the residents of the San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys. He also serves as the president for the non-profit that funds the festival.

John Brantingham is a widely sought speaker and educator. Along with teaching at his home institution, Mt. SAC, he has taught advanced courses in creative writing for the Chautauqua Institution, Inlandia Institute, NYU Shanghai, the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, and Cal State, Long Beach. He has read across the United States and in China, Canada, England, and Wales.

He co-edited The L.A. Fiction Anthology (Red Hen Books). His 23 poetry and fiction collections include Gone Back to Wild (Arroyo Seco Press), East of Los Angeles (Anaphora Literary Press), The Green of Sunset (Moon Tide Press), Let Us All Pray Now to Our Own Strange Gods (World Parade Books), Crossing the High Sierra (Cholla Needles Press), and California Continuum: Volume 1 (Pelekinesis Press), with Grant Hier.

John's book featured on Fox26News's Great Day Book Club.

John’s poem featured on Writer’s Almanac.

“In an age of superficiality, mediocrity, and sound-cliches, John Brantingham is a genuine throwback to when Men of Letters roamed the literary prairies. His creative and intellectual emanations brim with his enthusiasms, his versatility, and the depths of spirituality and social conscience at the core of his soul. There is no one of whom I could speak more highly, as a writer and as a person.”
~ Gerald Locklin author of The Case of The Missing Blue Volkswagen and others.

“Wise and insightful, Brantingham’s work brilliantly captures the light and darkness in us all.”
~ James Brown author of This River.