Kimberly Johnson

Poet, translator, and literary critic Kimberly Johnson was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is the author of several books of poetry, including Fatal (Persea Books, 2022), Uncommon Prayer (Persea Books, 2014), and A Metaphorical God (Persea Books, 2008). With her partner, Jay Hopler, she coedited Before the Door of God: An Anthology of Devotional Poetry (Yale University Press, 2013). Her poetry, translations, and scholarly essays have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, Slate, The Iowa Review, the Milton Quarterly, and Modern Philology.

Johnson’s monograph on the poetic developments of post-Reformation poetry, Made Flesh: Sacrament and Poetics in Post-Reformation England (University of Pennsylvania Press), was published in 2014. In 2017, Northwestern University Press released her translations of Hesiod’s Theogony & Works and Days in a bilingual edition. In 2011, Penguin Random House released her translation of Virgil’s Georgics.

Johnson earned an MA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and a PhD in Renaissance Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. She has been supported by grants and fellowships from organizations including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Utah Arts Council, and the Mellon Foundation. Johnson teaches Renaissance literature and creative writing at Brigham Young University. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.