Category Archives: Uncategorized

Peter Selgin writes with commanding invention, wry intelligence, and a searching eye, turning the complexities of human experience into stories that are at once visually vivid, emotionally fraught, and quietly tragic; so you can imagine how delighted I am to receive Selgin’s advance praise for Among the Dynamos (BlazeVOX [books]), my forthcoming novel:

“You’ll be whipped through Among the Dynamos, John Madera’s tour-de-force novel, by the swift current of its narrator’s unique voice, one you’re not likely to forget any time soon, with plenty of white water to keep you in thrills. But what I admire most about Among the Dynamos isn’t its dazzling linguistic pyrotechnics but the wit, intelligence, and insightful grasp of our age that gleam off every page, and make this Dantesque tour through our present day Inferno not only bearable but enrapturing.”
—Peter Selgin, author of Drowning Lessons, Life Goes to the Movies, and Duplicity 

Delighted to share that BlazeVOX [books] will be publishing Among the Dynamos, my debut novel (publication date: TBD)! Big thanks to Geoffrey Gatza and everyone at BlazeVOX [books]!

Here’s a description of the book:

Among the Dynamos tells the story of Ernesto Gonzalez, a Latinx talent agent caught in the crosscurrents of the attention economy, a love “quadrilateral,” and a mysterious illness. An influencer “exploring” non-monogamy while battling an actual itch he can’t scratch, Ernesto must navigate the needs, desires, and obsessions of his clients—and his own. Fleeing his dumpster-fire of a city, he embarks on a picaresque odyssey across what he calls this “land of the bilk and money.” Featuring a zany cast that includes an irl action figure, an increasingly unhinged performance artist, and the stars of a controversial reality television show, Among the Dynamos upends conventional notions of art, sex, death, politics, celebrity, and technology.

Like the novels of Paul Beatty, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, Sam Lipsyte, Richard Powers, Colson Whitehead, and Joy Williams, John Madera’s Among the Dynamos bears witness to the decline of the American empire, with a keen ear for the fuzz of relationships, the buzz of technology, and the scuzz of popular culture.

John Keene’s brilliant, genre-defying writing combines archival rigor, formal innovation, and profound moral imagination to illuminate hidden histories and open new pathways for literary expression; so you can imagine how delighted I am to share Keene’s advance praise for Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press), my forthcoming collection of poetry:

“The wry, charged, and ruminative poems in John Madera’s poetry debut, Nomad Science, remind us that poetry is always a form of thinking, of working through the mundanities and complexities of experience in language and as language. In poem after poem, we can see Madera’s lyric science and witness him setting thought to flight.”
—John Keene, MacArthur Fellow and author of Counternarratives and Punks: New & Selected Poems (winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Poetry)

I’ve long loved Rae Armantrout’s ingenious, lyrical, witty, probing poems; so you can imagine my great delight to share Armantrout’s advance praise for Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press), my forthcoming collection of poetry:

“In his poem ‘No Things but in Ideas,’ John Madera identifies first as a succulent, then as spider plant twisting itself toward a distant light. There’s something appealingly modest and persistent in this image. It is also an apt way to describe what Madera does in Nomad Science as a whole: his work here acknowledges death but seeks out life-forwarding currents in an often otherwise hostile environment. We need more of that.”
—Rae Armantrout, author of many books, including Go Figure, Finalists, Conjure, and Versed (winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry)