Joshua C. Gaines is a former Air Force Captain who earned his Writing MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

A winner in The Iowa Review‘s 2024 Jeff Sharlet Prize, shortlisted for the 2024 Fractured Literature Flash Open Prize, and the winner of the 2025 North Dakota State University’s Poetry of the Plains Prize, Joshua’s work has been published in The Iowa Review, Electric Literature, The Pinch, and Driftwood Press, and his poetry is forthcoming in Rattle.

His novel, Long Autumn, and poetry book, Cigarette Sonatas, were published by Thoughtcrime Press. His newest book of narrative poetry, After the Floating Barn, was written with Ben Clark and released by NDSU Press in 2025.