John Lang

John Lang was born into the Arizona State Adoption System, where he stayed until he was adopted out. At the age of thirteen he was arrested for stealing motorcycles and was sent to New Mexico Military Institute, where he wrote his first poem. Soonafter that, he began writing short stories.

After he was released from the Institute he went on to forge a twenty-five-year career as a journeyman pop song lyricist and songwriter in Hollywood, California, writing songs for everyone from Tupac Shakur to Celine Dion, as well as the evergreen hits "Broken Wings" and "Kyrie" for the band Mr. Mister. During that time he continued to write fiction; he graduated from the MFA Writing program at Columbia University in 1992; won the William Faulkner Literary Competition with his short story "Bent Spoon" in 2018; and completed the novel, "All the Darkness Holds," which was a semi-finalist in the 2024 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition.

"Writing keeps me hinged, ' he says. "It always has. Early on I found that the life of the mind can be just as intoxicating as that of the sublunary world."

John Lang lives in southern California with his wife and son.