Short Bio:

Lauren C. Johnson attributes her upbringing in Florida, America’s weirdest state, to her interest in the ecological and surreal. Her writing has appeared in Mason Jar Press, Maudlin House, the Swamp Ape Review, the Museum of Science Fiction, and others. She is the interviews editor for The Racket Journal and is a member of The Ruby, a Bay Area collective for women and non-binary artists and creatives. She earned her MFA in creative writing at American University and lives in San Francisco, where she is a co-host of Babylon Salon, a quarterly Bay Area reading series, and Club Chicxulub, a sci-fi and fantasy performance series. Her debut novel, The West Façade, is forthcoming from Santa Fe Writers Project (SFWP) in 2026.

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Thank you for visiting my website! Growing up in Tampa, Florida, I watched as gated communities, Publix supermarkets, and the ever-expanding roads encroached upon the live oaks and palmettos. Witnessing negotiations between development and the natural world turned me into an environmentalist. I believe our relationship with the land informs each relationship in our lives. While Bed Bath & Beyond stores rise from the leveled earth, alligators sun themselves in our backyards. In a place like Hillsborough County, where sinkholes threaten houses, how much control over our environment can we really claim?

I’m a proud alumna of Emerson College where I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in print journalism. Throughout my career, I’ve juggled writing fiction and creative nonfiction with my work in nonprofits, government, and tech. Prior to moving to San Francisco, I lived in Washington, D.C., Ecuador, and briefly Italy. For information on my work as a content writer and strategist, please visit laurencjo.com.

In 2017, I earned an MFA in creative writing from American University, where I was a merit recipient. I regularly contributed to AU’s Cafe MFA and was a fiction reader for FOLIO. I participated in the summer creative writing program at John Cabot University in Rome.

I’m an alumna of the Kenyon Review Online Writers Workshop ‘23, Tin House Summer ‘22 workshop, ZYZZYVA fiction workshop ‘19, Lit Camp ‘19, Breadloaf Environmental Writers’ Conference ‘18, and the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conferences 2019-2022. I’m currently workshopping my novel in Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Body of the Book workshop through Corporeal Writing.

I’m a co-host of Babylon Salon, one of San Francisco’s longest-running literary and performance series, and a co-founder of Club Chicxulub, a reading series featuring emerging speculative fiction authors accompanied by synthwave, dark wave, and ambient beats.

I am a proud member of The Ruby, a collective for women and non-binary artists in the Bay Area. For a list of books I’m reading, follow me on bookshop.org.