Taylor Johnson

Taylor Johnson is the author of Inheritance (Alice James Books, 2020), winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America and named one of the Best Poetry Books of 2020 by the New York Times. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, and Scalawag, among other literary journals.

Johnson has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Yaddo, The Nicholson Project, Callaloo, and the Conversation Literary Festival, among other organizations. He is the winner of the 2017 Larry Neal Writers’ Award from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities (CAH), the 2021 Judith A. Markowitz Emerging Writer Award from Lambda Literary, and a 2021 Pushcart Prize for his poem “Trans is against nostalgia.” 

Johnson is a student of the percussive architecture of go-go music. He was named the inaugural poet in residence at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Originally from Washington, D.C., Johnson was appointed poet laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland, from 2022 to 2025. In 2023, Johnson received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.