John Van Rys lives on a hobby farm outside Dunnville, Ontario, with his wife April, dogs, cats, horses, free-run egg-laying hens, and his mother-in-law. He’s also survived raising four children, all of them now released upon an unsuspecting world. When he’s not at home caring for animals, he spends his time as an English professor teaching literature and writing courses. And when he’s not teaching, he’s writing—including poems and stories. He started writing fiction when his wife got tired of him complaining he couldn't find time to write stories, so she told him to write something as a present to her. Being Dutch-Canadian, he jumped at the chance to save money on gifts. While he’s published a number of these stories in journals such as The New Quarterly, The Dalhousie Review, Agnes and True, Blank Spaces, and Solum Literary Journal, his first book-length collection is Moonshine Promises, published by Wipf and Stock. John is also the winner of the 2022 Prairie Fire MRB Short Fiction Contest for his story "Excavations."
