James Janko

James Janko’s most recent novel, The Wire-Walker (2025), has received the following awards and honors:

• a Nautilus Gold Winner for Best Fiction of 2025 from a Large Press (Janko shares the Nautilus Gold with Ocean Vuong and his novel, The Emperor of Gladness)

• the Indie Reader Discovery Award in Overall Fiction (2nd Place)

• the Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts Press

• finalist for the Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence

• finalist for the Montaigne Medal

• Albuquerque Journal, the most widely read newspaper in New Mexico, chose The Wire-Walker as one of the best five books in 2025.

• Independent Publisher Book Awards highlights 2025’s Outstanding Books in fiction and non-fiction; among the thousands of books entered, The Wire-Walker is among the top eleven.

Janko's previous novels also received accolades.The Clubhouse Thief (New Issues Poetry & Prose/Western Michigan University, 2018) won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award for the Novel. Buffalo Boy and Geronimo (Northwestern University Press/Curbstone, 2006) won the Northern California Book Award for Fiction and The Association of Asian American Studies Book Award. What We Don’t Talk About (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022) tells the story of Janko’s hometown in rural Illinois.

Janko’s short fiction has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Sun, The Iowa Review, Nimrod International Journal, and Eureka Literary Magazine, among others. His story, “Fallujah in a Mirror”, won the Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award.

Janko served in Viet Nam as a combat medic in an infantry battalion commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer III. One of his nicknames is "Custer's medic". Janko's experience in war transformed him into a veteran for peace.