John Oakes (he/him b. 1961) is a writer whose first book The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Promise of Doing Without was published in 2024 by Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster and was translated into several languages. He is now working on a book about value as expressed in our long and complicated relationship with gold. A longtime book editor and publisher, he has been publisher of the online literary magazine The Evergreen Review since 2015. He is editor-at-large for OR Books, an independent press he co-founded in 2009. He has been awarded writers’ residencies at Yaddo, Jentel, Art Omi, and elsewhere, and was named a “chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres” by the French government. He lives in New York City