Born and raised in Compton, California, educated at Howard University and Cornell University, Amaud Jamaul Johnson is the author of three poetry collections, Red Summer, Darktown Follies, and Imperial Liquor (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020). A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford, MacDowell Colony Fellow, and Cave Canem Fellow, his honors include the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Dorset Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Callaloo, Narrative Magazine, Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, The Southern Review, Harvard Review and elsewhere. He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is the Halls-Bascom Professor of English.