Roman Johnson, PhD, is a writer from Memphis, Tennessee. He is currently a second-year Master’s of Fine Arts student in the Department of Literary Arts at Brown University. He has a Ph.D. in Medical Sociology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a M.A. in African American Studies from Georgia State University and obtained a B.A. in Political Science from Morehouse College. He is the co-founder of the New England Hoodoo Society. He is the winner of the 2026 Michael S. Harper Memorial Prize in Poetry from Brown University, Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize from Backbone Press,  a past winner of the Clark Atlanta University Poetry Prize and has received fellowships and residencies in poetry, fiction, and science from Harvard University, Northwestern University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Brown University, the National Institutes of Health, Breadloaf, Lambda Literary, and elsewhere. His work can be found in Arc Poetry Magazine, American Literary Review, Obsidian, African Voices Magazine, and elsewhere. He can be found online at his personal website: literaryhoodoo.com. He believes the real work of writing is living well.