John-Ivan Palmer, son of a nightclub magician and Croatian actress, grew up in trailer parks and dressing rooms where he taught himself to read as well as write forward and backward with either hand. Although technically he never graduated from the first grade, he has become an award-winning author.

He began publishing in the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, Milwaukee Journal and Oregon Journal, then literary magazines such as The Smith, December, NewsArt, Wisconsin Review, and Other Voices. His memoir of floorshow and trailer park culture, Master of Deception, was nominated for the National Book Award and short-listed for the National Indie Award. His writing has been anthologized in the US, Britain, Israel and Japan and has won the Pushcart Prize for fiction.

Simultaneously, he has pursued a lifetime of international travel as a stage hypnotist (many clips on YouTube), an experience he describes in Hypnotic Control, Reflections on the Nature of Staged Influence. With this unlikely combination of careers—writer and hypnotist—it should not be surprising that his work deals with outsider topics that open doors to the unfamiliar. His themes, often strange and beyond the usual boundaries, subvert popular assumptions while humanizing people who are different. His refined and belletristic style has been described as “sharp and weirdly funny in ways that sneak up on the reader.”

• Irreverent interview with John-Ivan Palmer by Tom Bradley, author of 40 books: Exquisite Corpse, Journal of Letters and Life.
• Radio interview, “Minnesota Reads” on The North, 103.3FM, Luke Moravec talks with Palmer about the dark side of hypnotic influence.
• Radio interview with sound effects, KFAI MinneCulture Series, focusing on Palmer’s experience with 1950s floor shows.
• Profile in University of Minnesota News, describing John-Ivan Palmer as “a born archivist.”
• Review of Hypnotic Control in 3 AM Magazine depicting Palmer as “a fearless spelunker of the human psyche.”