John Stone is the author of the poetry volumes The Smell of Matches, In All This Rain, Renaming the Streets, and Where Water Begins; and the essay collection In the Country of Hearts: Journeys in the Art of Medicine. He is a coeditor of On Doctoring, an anthology of literature and medicine that since 1991 has been presented to every student entering a U.S. medical school as a gift from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Now professor of medicine (cardiology) emeritus at Emory University School of Medicine, he was for nineteen years director of admissions and associate dean at the school.

"There are any number of physicians who have earned attention as prose writers, but very few - excepting such poets as William Carios Williams and Merrill Moore - who have written significant poetry, Dr. John Stone belongs in that rare and honored company." - George Garrett"