“The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.” – Kurt Vonnegut
"Let us be clear: censorship is cowardice." - Pablo Antonio Cuadra
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." - Salman Rushdie
About John Mummert
I was born in Elmhurst, Illinois, attended high school in downstate Johnston City, and earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Illinois. Following graduate school at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas, I spent thirty years in the environmental protection field, most of that time in water quality protection and restoration programs with the state environmental agency in Texas. After retirement, I turned my attention to writing. After many years in Texas, I have relocated to western Minnesota to escape the worsening heat and traffic, lower the risk of experiencing tornadoes, and frankly, in hopes of finding a space far less enraptured by the irrational hate, recreational cruelty, and irresponsible anti-science lunacy currently plaguing the country.
This website is a work in progress, an internet presence to link to my writing projects. I have no desire to participate in the pestilence known as social media.
I am a member of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and Pikes Peak Writers. My short stories have been published in the anthology Wild: Uncivilized Tales From Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and in Sangam Literary Magazine.
"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people
running about with lit matches." - Ray Bradbury
My Stories
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live." – Joan Didion
Who We Were Then
A spring break fishing trip ends in violence, with guilt reverberating through a lifetime.
Published in the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers anthology
Wild: Uncivilized Tales From Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers
Selected as an "Other Distinguished Mystery & Suspense" story in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021
Six Hundred Feet
Two women stand vigil at the scene of a Christmastime mining disaster. Based loosely on a December 1951 coal mine disaster in West Frankfort, Illinois.
Published in Sangam Literary Magazine (Volume 3, Issue 1, Spring 2023)
"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” – Oscar Wilde
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