John Pistelli is the author of the novel Major Arcana (Belt Publishing, 2025). He has also written four prior novels—The Class of 2000, The Quarantine of St. Sebastian House, Portraits and Ashes, and The Ecstasy of Michaela—as well as diverse short fiction, poetry, and literary and cultural criticism that has appeared in many venues. He writes a weekly newsletter on literature and culture and hosts a podcast on the literary canon at his bestselling Substack Grand Hotel Abyss. A longtime teacher with a Ph.D. in English, he has uploaded the lectures for two full university literature courses at YouTube, alongside other lectures, audio essays, and audio fiction. He can be contacted for business inquiries at johnppistelli@gmail.com. He currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA.

The archive of literary essays here at johnpistelli.com (written between 2014 and 2022) are primarily devoted to classic books in all genres. They are indexed by genre—fiction, poetry, drama, nonfiction, and comics—and alphabetically by author’s surname here.