Jonah Walters
Filed under: Authors
Jonah Walters is a writer from Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. His essays and criticism have appeared in Full Stop, Gulf Coast, Jacobin, Longreads, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. His reporting has been supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism and appeared in outlets like The Conversation, the Guardian, and The Outline. His essay on Icelandic literature and seismology was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2024, and his paper on the psychiatric origins of electric shock weapons won the Early Career Prize from the journal History of the Human Sciences in 2025.
An itinerant academic, Jonah has lately benefited from research fellowships at UCLA and the Science History Institute in Philadelphia. Previously, he covered rancor in the Hudson Valley and hunger in the Mojave Desert as a stringer for local newspapers. Last summer he followed North America's center crease downriver from Cahokia to Moundville, photographing Mississippian earthworks (the local mosquitoes showered him with kisses all the way). Since forever, he has been working on a book called Less Than Lethal: A History of Police Weapons. He lives in Queens, New York.
Website: https://linktr.ee/jonahwalters
Winning Entry: The Burnable Seas
Contest Won: Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest 2026, First Prize
