Amanda Johnston

Amanda Johnston is a writer, artist, and the 2024 Texas State Poet Laureate. She earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, and the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter (Argus House Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications, including Callaloo, Poetry Magazine, The Moth, Puerto del Sol, Muzzle, and the anthologies Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry (Northwestern University Press, 2019) and Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism (OR Books, 2018). She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, Tasajillo, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Watermill Center, American Short Fiction, and the Austin International Poetry Festival. She is a former board president of the Cave Canem Foundation and the founder and executive director of Torch Literary Arts. She was appointed the 2024 poet laureate of Texas.