Arnold Johnston

Scottish-born Arnold Johnston lives in Kalamazoo and South Haven, MI. His poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and translations have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies. His plays, and others written in collaboration with his wife, Deborah Ann Percy, have won over 300 productions and readings, as well as numerous awards and publications across the country and internationally; and they’ve written, co-written, edited, or translated over twenty books. Arnie’s latest projects are Where We’re Going, Where We’ve Been, a poetry collection (FutureCycle Press, 2020), Swept Away, a novel (Atmosphere Press, 2021), and Mr. Robert Monkey Returns to New York (with Debby, Brandylane Publishers, 2021). A new chapbook of Arnie’s poetry, The Infernal Now, will appear in 2022 from Kelsay Books. His other titles include two poetry chapbooks—Sonnets: Signs and Portents and What the Earth Taught Us; The Witching Voice: A Play about Robert Burns; Of Earth and Darkness: The Novels of William Golding; and The Witching Voice: A Novel from the Life of Robert Burns. His many accurate English versions of Jacques Brel’s songs have appeared in numerous musical revues nationwide (including acclaimed Chicago productions Jacques Brel: Songs of Love and War and Jacques Brel’s Lonesome Losers of the Night, the latter of which the Chicago Tribune named one of 30 “must-see” shows for summer 2017), and are also featured on his CD, Jacques Brel: I’m Here! Commissioned by the Kalamazoo Civic Theatre, Arnie and Debby’s interactive drama The Night Before Christmas had its highly successful world premiere in December 2012. The New Vic Theatre premiered their chilling comedy Giving Up the Ghosts in October 2013 and Ghosts was produced in October 2018 as winner of Pennsylvania Playhouse’s New Play Competition. Their award- winning one-act “Steering into the Skid” has had more than 100 readings and productions nationwide and appears in The MemoryCare Plays (2014), an anthology of plays about Alzheimer’s disease that won a 2014 Independent Publishers Book Award. Their one-act “Love Is Strange” appears in Art & Understanding: The Twentieth Anniversary Anthology (2015), a collection of AIDS-related work. From 2009-2012 they were joint Arts and Entertainment columnists for the award-winning national quarterly journal Phi Kappa Phi Forum. A performer-singer, Arnie has played many solo concerts and over 100 roles on stage, screen, and radio; he has also done individual dialect coaching and group workshops in a range of accents. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Poets & Writers, the Associated Writing Programs, and the American Literary Translators Association. He was chairman of the English Department (1997-2007) and taught for many years at Western Michigan University, where he co-founded the creative writing program and founded the playwriting program. He is now a full-time writer.