Julia Johnson’s poems have appeared in Third Coast, Poetry International, 64, and The Greensboro Review. A New Orleans native who lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow at the University of Virginia, where she earned an MFA in 1995. Her first book of poems, Naming the Afternoon (2002), was published by the Louisiana State University Press. Johnson also won the Fellowship of Southern Writers’ 2003 New Writing Award. She teaches writing at the University of Southern Mississippi.  

Photo by Rie Forenberry