John Summers is the author of the non-fiction collection, The Commercial Hotel, published by Victoria University Press in July 2021. His first book, The Mermaid Boy, was published by Hue & Cry Press in 2015. His writing has appeared in Sport, North & South, Landfall, Newsroom and The Spinoff. He was the winner of the 2022 Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Imaginative Prose, has been a finalist in the Voyager Media Awards, and won the non-fiction category in the 2016 Sunday Star-Times Short Story Awards.