John Vercher lives in the Philadelphia area with his wife and two sons. He holds a Bachelor’s in English from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Mountainview Master of Fine Arts program, and served as an adjunct faculty member at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. He currently serves as visiting faculty at Randolph College’s low-residency MFA program in Lynchburg, Virginia and at Chatham University’s low-residency MFA program in Pittsburgh, PA.

John has written for Cognoscenti, the thoughts and opinions page of WBUR Boston. Two of his essays published on race, identity, and parenting were featured by NPR, and he has appeared on WBUR’s Weekend Edition. His non-fiction work has also appeared in Entropy Magazine, CrimeReads, and Booklist.

John’s debut novel, Three-Fifths, was named one of the best books of 2019 by the Chicago Tribune. In the U.K., Three-Fifths was named a Book of the Year by The Sunday Times, The Financial Times, and The Guardian.

His second novel, After the Lights Go Out, was published by Soho Press on June 7, 2022. French and U.K. rights have also been sold. It’s been called “simply brilliant” by Publishers Weekly in a starred review and “shrewd and explosive” by The New York Times. BookRiot selected the novel as a 2022 Best Book of the Summer and Publishers Weekly included it in their Summer Reads 2022 list.