J. K. Fowler grew up in the countryside of the California coast. The golden hills, rolling fog, and mossy oaks that he revered as a child left an indelible impression and continue to show up in his writing. He understood from a very young age that trees and grasses hold ancient wisdom, embrace us within their roots, and that we exist within an undeniable interconnectedness to all. His childhood home was a renovated barn, and he learned early on the whispers of wood grains, copper, and weathered brick; it was a dramatic setting for a child who would later spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how spaces shape stories.

As a kid, he also spent years raising animals through 4-H and FFA, mucking stalls and stepping through mud in gum boots before school and learning the unglamorous rhythms of care, loss, and responsibility that come with tending to living beings. County fairs, show rings, and pre-dawn feedings taught him as much about humility and interdependence as any classroom ever would, and those early lessons in stewardship continue to inform how he thinks about community, land, and what it means to be in right relation.

He has worked odd jobs since he was 15 and each position has offered wisdom that has informed his later pursuits. He has bussed and waited tables at high-end restaurants, given horseback and butterfly tours through the Cloud Forest of Monteverde, worked on an ostrich farm in Cape Point, South Africa, taught English in Lesotho via the Peace Corps, interned at an agricultural law firm where he saw firsthand the effects of industrial farming, taught college courses at a prestigious East Coast university, led operations and HR at a harm reduction organization, managed a Cuban restaurant in Cape Town, and run an underground political publication in his undergrad years during the political power grabs in the aftermath of 9/11, to name just a few; if there were a loyalty card for unlikely jobs, he would have earned the free donut years ago. He continues to learn to live from the truth of inherent abundance and to evolve a spiritual awareness that centers interconnectedness and the multi-plane reality of our day-to-day lives.

He studied at the University of California, Davis, The New School in New York, and the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. His studies ranged from political philosophy to international affairs, anthropology, history of science, sociology, philosophy, art, and critical theory. He continues to learn every chance he gets with a steady stream of podcasts playing and a rotation of at least two books at all times, a situation his overworked bookshelves might reasonably describe as “a cry for help.”

In search of authentic found family and earnest community in Brooklyn, New York, in 2011 he founded Nomadic Press, a national award-winning, community-focused nonprofit publisher that was in operation until 2023 and headquartered in Oakland, California, with additional nodes in Xalapa, Mexico, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 12 years, they published over 150 titles and hosted thousands of community events all around the United States and Mexico. In 2025, he and his husband opened Nomadic Bookshop in Uptown Oakland, a cozy experiment in radical hospitality and book love that will serve as the home for the reemergence of Nomadic Press in 2026, and as an ongoing excuse to keep rearranging shelves. In 2026, Nomadic Press reopened its doors with a new circle-based governance model and the first new books from the revamped publishing house will start to hit shelves in 2027.

In 2021, he co-founded Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore & Gallery in the heart of the Mission District in San Francisco with Tân Khanh Cáo and Josiah Luis Alderete. In 2022, he stepped away from this project when he moved to Mexico and they continue to run this important community resource with amazing success. Later in 2022, he co-founded Bundo with Alejandro Cervantes Jimenéz, a café/pizzería/librería/gallery/community event space in the heart of Xalapa, the capital of the Mexican state of Veracruz, featuring food, music, artwork, writing, and performance from artists from all over Mexico and the world.

In 2023, he also started Huerto de Osos Perezosos (“Vegetable Patch of the Sloths”), a short-lived (but really fun) international retreat center for creative souls based in Xalapa, Mexico; he is, by most reasonable measures, often overcommitted, and would not have it any other way.

He has spoken to classrooms and organizations on small publishing and the art of making space all over the nation. Civic engagement is important to him, and from 2020–2023, he sat on the City of Oakland’s Cultural Affairs Commission (where he spearheaded the launch of the first Oakland Poet Laureate Program in 2021), acted as Co-chair on the board of North Atlantic Books and Secretary on the board of the Oakland Peace Center, and sat on Cogswell College’s English and Humanities Professional Advisory Board. He currently Chairs the board of Foglifter Press and is a director on the board of Vital Arts.

He has been published in a wide range of publications, including Poets & Writers, KALW, KQED, San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Magazine, SF Weekly, Oaklandside, Oakland Voices, Datebook (SF Chronicle), Bay Area Reporter, and elsewhere, has performed across the US, Egypt, Mexico, and New York, and has been featured in a number of radio shows and online podcasts, including shows on KPFA, KPOO, StoryCorps, and others. He is the recipient of the 2016 Alameda County Arts Leadership Award and continues to travel the world with a Kelpie named Stella and the recent edition Andromeda. Both creatures remain unconvinced that writing counts as a real job and prefer long walks in parks as a form of labor.

For three years, he has been working on a book titled Making Space, a wide-ranging nuts-and-bolts “how to publish” creative nonfiction text paired with the aesthetic philosophy of literally and figuratively making space on the page and stage. One day, he will finish the book, as the work of making space appears determined to remain ongoing.