Alison Johnson

After graduating from Carleton College, Alison Johnson studied mathematics at the Sorbonne on a National Science Foundation Fellowship and received a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. In 2010 she received a Distinguished Achievement Award from Carleton College.

Like poet/lawyer Wallace Stevens, Johnson has maintained wide-ranging professional interests and has found such variety a stimulus to her creative work. In addition to her biographies titled “Wallace Stevens: A Dual Life as Poet and Insurance Executive” and “Henry James: His Life Revealed Through His Letters,” she has written a tragic/comic family memoir titled “The Eleventh Hour Can’t Last Forever” that is endorsed by Warren Buffett. Her James biography is the only one being sold at Lamb House, his home in Rye, England.

In her books, Johnson quotes heavily from letters, memoirs, and other primary sources instead of paraphrasing the words of great writers like Wallace Stevens or Henry James.

Johnson has also produced and directed documentaries titled “The World of Wallace Stevens,” “Multiple Chemical Sensitivity: A Life-Altering Condition,” “Gulf War Syndrome: Aftermath of a Toxic Battlefield,” and “The Toxic Clouds of 9/11: A Looming Health Disaster.” Johnson chairs the Chemical Sensitivity Foundation. She lives in midcoast Maine.