Johnson is the bestselling author of Welcome to Braggsville (William Morrow), longlisted for the National Book Award and Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, and Hold It ’Til It Hurts (Coffee House Press), a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He won the Ernest J Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and the William Saroyan International Prize, has been awarded the Rome Prize, received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he taught writing, and has held Stegner and Iowa Arts
fellowships.