John Milton Wesley is an author and “singer songwriter” although he is better known for his published prose and poetry. He moved to Columbia, MD in 1973 from Mississippi to pursue a career in marketing and media. He was first published in the Columbia Flier newspaper in 1974.

Since then, his work has been published in nine prose and poetry anthologies in the U.S. and abroad, translated into Spanish, and Arabic, and his music is now played in countries around the world. He has remained on the :www.ReverbNation.com “Top 20” performers list in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area for the past four years. He writes, arranges and performs all of his own music.

His “by-line” is also familiar to readers of Essence Magazine, or the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Afro–American Newspapers, and across social media where he blogs via The Huffington Post, and on WordPress.com. However, Wesley’s greatest passion has remained in his music since it began in church and the school choir in his hometown of Ruleville, MS. There he first learned to play on an old piano in his grandmothers “front room”. Following her death in 1963, Wesley moved to Jackson, MS where he met and worked with a budding group of young singers and song writers in a little studio that eventually became Malaco Studios.

Wesley’s “breakout” musical performance occurred at Merriweather Post Pavilion in 2008 for the 40th Birthday anniversary celebration of his adopted hometown Columbia, MD. That same year he was invited to perform his “spoken word” during the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalist (NABJ) convention in Las Vegas, and later at The Bowery Poetry Project in New York. Other venues for his work include Stanford University, The College of Notre Dame, Ursinus College, in Collegeville, PA, Singers in Baltimore, Annie’s Place, Temple Hills Maryland where he opened for Nigerian Soul Singer “Kuku,” and on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered”, and on April 20, 2012 he opened for comedian “Sinbad” in Baltimore at the Marriott Inner Harbor East Hotel. In June of 2012 he performed with poet Nikki Giovanni in a special salute to Maryland Poet Laureate.