Denis Johnson

Denis Johnson was born in Munich on July 1, 1949, and raised in Tokyo, Manila, and the suburbs outside of Washington, D.C. He studied with Raymond Carver while earning his MFA from the University of Iowa. While still enrolled, his first book of verse, The Man Among the Seals (Stone Wall Press, 1969), was published.

During the next few years, Johnson published several more collections of poetry, including The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly: Poems Collected and New (Harper Perennial, 1995); The Veil (Alfred A. Knopf, 1985); The Incognito Lounge (Random House, 1982), selected by Mark Strand for the National Poetry Series in 1982; and Inner Weather (Graywolf, 1976). 

Johnson is also the author of numerous works of fiction, including Train Dreams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; Nobody Move (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009); Tree of Smoke (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), winner of the National Book Award; Jesus' Son (Harper Perennial, 1992), which was later adapted for the screen; and Angels (Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), which received the Sue Kauffman Prize for First Fiction from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He is also the author of several plays as well as the essay collection Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond (Harper Perennial, 2001).

About his poetry, the poet and fiction writer Raymond Carver said, “Denis Johnson’s poems are driven by a ravening desire to make sense out of the life lived. The subject matter is harrowingly convincing, is nothing less than a close examination of the darker side of human conduct.”

Johnson’s other honors include a Lannan Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from The Paris Review. A resident of Arizona and Idaho, he died on May 25, 2017.