Allan Johnston

Allan Johnston (he/him) is the author of the full-length poetry collections Tasks of Survival (Edwin Mellen Press, 1996), In a Window (Shanti Arts, 2018), and Sable and Selected Poems (Shanti Arts, 2022), as well as the chapbooks Northport (Finishing Line Press, 2010), Departures (Finishing Line Press, 2013), and Contingencies (Finishing Line Press, 2015). His poems have been published in more than 60 journals, including Poetry, Rattle, and Rhino. Johnston received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship; he also won first prize in the 2010 Outrider Press Literary Anthology poetry competition. His scholarly articles have been published in Twentieth Century Literature, College Literature, and elsewhere. His translations and cotranslations of poems from French and German have been published in AzonaL, Ezra, MAYDAY Magazine, Metamorphoses, and Transference.

Johnston earned an MA in creative writing and a PhD in English from UC Davis, and has taught writing and literature, mostly in Chicago. He served as a reader for r.kv.r.y., word~river, and the Illinois Emerging Poets competition, and he coedits Journal for the Philosophical Study of Education.