John Sheppard

28 Articles

John Sheppard served four years in the United States Army as an Illustrator (MOS 81E). He was honorably discharged after Gulf War I. He went on to receive an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Florida, where he studied under Padgett Powell, Marjorie Sandor and Harry Crews. He has worked as a grill cook, web site designer, junk mail writer, small town newspaper editor and civil servant. He lives in Chicago.

John Sheppard
9 Min Read

He is an old man, and on first inspection he seems like the kind of old man who would eat dog food out of a can because he can afford nothing better. His clothes are not synthetic. He wears a brown blazer with missing buttons….

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John Sheppard
6 Min Read

This is me, John Sheppard, not some writerly pose. This is me talking, so listen up, take a knee. I have something to say directly to you, without the mediating booze called fiction. Twenty years ago today, on May 27, 1992, my little sister Nancy…

John Sheppard
8 Min Read

In this excerpt from Alpha Mike Foxtrot (a novel from Paragraph Line Books), Joe Dugan, a soldier recently released from active duty as medically unfit, settles in to life at a boarding house in a small Midwestern town. Hours lazily glided by. I stared out…

John Sheppard
4 Min Read

On my last visit home to Florida, on convalescent leave from Walter Reed, limping and wounds still seeping, I’d made the mistake of staying with my mother – she with the guilt rays emanating from her eye-sockets. Her guilt rays had doubled in power. She’d…

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