Allan Johnston was born in La Jolla, California, and grew up around Los Angeles. In his life he has worked as a forest fire fighter, cook, musician, photographer, shake splitter, and roofer, among other occupations.
He holds a Master's in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in American Literature, both from the University of California, Davis. He currently teaches writing and literature at DePaul University, Chicago, and Columbia College, Chicago.
As a poet, one of Allan Johnston's passions has been to record impressions of wild areas such as the woods of eastern Washington and the Sierra Nevada. These efforts have resulted in three sequences: Northport, a chapbook currently under consideration; "Return," an eleven-poem sequence detailing a journey from Phoenix, Arizona, to Desolation Wilderness, and "Range of Light," the title poem of his second collection of poetry, currently under consideration. Poems from these sequences have appeared in Rhino, Weber Studies, Softblow, Jabberwock Review, Quarterly Review of Literature-Singapore, Poetry Midwest, and Art and Academe. Mr. Johnston, who has received a fellowship in poetry from the Illinois Arts Council, has also published one book of poems (Tasks of Survival, 1996) and had work appear in Poetry, Poetry East, Midwest Quarterly, California Quarterly, and over fifty other journals. Besides writing poetry, Dr. Johnston writes about the relations between poetry and environmentalism, including studies of Robinson Jeffers, Kenneth Rexroth, and Gary Snyder that have appeared or are forthcoming in ISLE, AUMLA, and Finding the Ox. Also, a volume of essays on Buddhism in American culture forthcoming from SUNY Press.
Examples of Allan Johnston's poetry can be found at: http://english.colum.edu/faculty/johnston.html