Sally J. Johnson is a poet and lyric essayist. She was a 2016 Fellow at the Lambda Literary Writer's Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices and a finalist for the 2016 Black Warrior Review Contest for Nonfiction. The winner of the 2015 Poetry International Prize judged by Carol Frost, she was also a finalist for Sycamore Review's Wabash Prize in Nonfiction, and winner of Madison Review's 2015 Phyllis Smart-Young Prize for Poetry. You can read more of her work in places like Sideareal Magazine, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Collagist, Bodega, Whiskey Island, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. Sally received her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington where she served as Managing Editor for the award-winning literary journal Ecotone. 

Sally lives in Chicago with her fiancé and their aging diva of a dog. She is currently in the Urban Teachers Education Program at the University of Chicago receiving her Masters in Education as well as the knowledge and tools to become a public elementary school teacher committed to social justice and educational equity. 

Find her online @sallyjayjohnson.

*She/Her/Hers