John Dermot Woods is an award-winning novelist, cartoonist, and teacher.
John Dermot Woods is the author of several acclaimed works of comics and graphic fiction, including his critically lauded graphic novel Mortals, a collaboration with the artist Matt L. His novel The Baltimore Atrocities, published by Coffee House Press, was an Electric Literature Best Novel of the Year, and an O Magazine Must-Read. His shorter work has been published widely, in places like The Believer, New York Magazine, DIAGRAM, and The Indiana Review. His comic strip, Animals in Midlife Crisis, created with Lincoln Michel, was serialized at The Rumpus.
John is a Full Professor of English and Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College, where he was awarded the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities. He served as the Viebranz Visiting Writer at St. Lawrence University, and has taught at Johns Hopkins University, Temple University Japan, and the MFA program at Manhattanville College. He regularly teaches Graphic Fiction workshops and lectures on comics as literature. All of his teaching is focused on using words and images to tell stories.
John and his family split their time between Brooklyn, New York and Mastic Beach on his native Long Island. He has a BA in English and Studio Art from Georgetown University, an MFA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, a PhD in English from the University of Georgia, and has studied at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont. He also lived in Tokyo, Japan for a few years. These days, you’re likely to find him, when not writing or teaching, surfing the mercurial waves off of Rockaway and the south shore of Long Island.