James F. Thomas is a writer based in New York City. His first novel, Idlewild, published in 2023, was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His essays and criticism have appeared in The Paris Review, Vulture, and James Joyce Quarterly. He holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was an Iowa Arts Fellow. He is a lecturer for the MA in Writing program at Johns Hopkins University.