J.D. Mathes grew up a feral child in the deserts of the American Southwest who loved to read library books and take photographs. In 2019 he was awarded a PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship. He has worked as a screenwriter with Rehabilitation Through the Arts, three-time awardee of the Norman Levan Grant, a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar alumnus, an award-winning author of four books, photographer, screenwriter, and librettist. Although Mathes still struggles with subject-verb agreement and where to put commas, he is currently working on a book length project with portraits, Ill Served: Veterans and Mass Incarceration, which will tell the stories of justice involved veterans and their experiences with mass incarceration. He loves his two daughters very much.