“To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.”
Wendell Berry
About
Kris Johnson is from the American Northwest and is a writer of essays and poetry with interests in gender and the environment. In 2015 she was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University for her thesis ‘All These Rivers (A Collection of Poetry) & Beyond the Temple, Beyond the Pond: Deep Ecology and Contemporary Writing of the American West’ that comprises a critical exploration of Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm and Ellen Meloy’s The Last Cheater’s Waltz and a collection of poetry that considers how the nature essay might inform the development of poetic forms. With the support of a Developing Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England, she is currently working on The Vast Kingdom of Nowhere, an experimental memoir which employs these principles.
Her work appears in such journals and anthologies including Hallelujah for 50ft Women (Bloodaxe), Ambit, The Irish Literary Review, Poetry London, Poetry Northwest and The Rialto. She has been a finalist in The Cadaverine Award for Young Writers and highly commended in The RSPB/Rialto Nature Poetry Competition. She has also been a commissioned writer on The Poetics of the Archive: Creative and Community Engagement with the Bloodaxe Archive, held residencies at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and Great North Museum: Hancock, received Catherine Cookson Foundation funding to produce a cross-cultural residential programme for poets in Newcastle and Belfast, assisted poet W.N. Herbert on a text-led public art project for Westpark Darlington, and worked for Mslexia. She currently teaches at Newcastle University where she is also a researcher.
Contact
Kris Johnson - Writer 