Barb Johnson worked as a carpenter in New Orleans for more than twenty-five years before embarking on a career in writing. She won Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers and Washington Square’s fiction competition. Her fiction has also appeared in such magazines as The Southern Review, The Greensboro Review, 52 Stories, Yemmassee, Baltimore Review, Guernica, and Oxford American. Her nonfiction can be found in a number of anthologies, including Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Jobs They Quit and The Booklover’s Guide to New Orleans.
Johnson has received grants from The Astraea Foundation and The Deming Fund, and she is the recipient of the Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation.
Her collection of short stories, More of This World or Maybe Another was an IndieNext pick and a Discover Great New Writers selection. It earned the second place prize at the Barnes & Noble Discover Awards and was selected for the American Library Association’s Barbara Gittings Literature Award.
She teaches fiction writing in the MFA program at the University of New Orleans.
Barb Johnson 