About
Matthew Johnson is formerly a sports journalist and editor, having written for The Carolinian, Fansided, The Daily Star (Oneonta, NY), and USA Today's College, and has been a contributor on the radio (WUAG 103.1); he remains a freelance editor. He has also served as a teaching assistant and tutor of American Literature and English Studies. He currently works in communications in the higher education setting.
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A native of New Rochelle, New York and raised in Stratford, Connecticut, he now lives in Greensboro, North Carolina after earning his M.A. in English from UNC-Greensboro. His scholarly interests included the Harlem Renaissance, 19th-century American Literature, Journalism and Media, and Rhetoric in American Sports.
His classic literary influences include Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandberg, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Washington Irving, and Phillis Wheatley. His modern influences include Kevin Young, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Yusef Komunyakaa, Nikki Giovanni, and Sonia Sanchez. His faith also deeply influences his writing, guiding the themes and values that shape his poems and stories.
