Barb Johnson has spent most of her adult life working as a carpenter. In 2004, at age forty-seven, she entered the MFA program at The University of New Orleans. During her time there, she won the Robert F. Gibbons Award, The Svenson Award for Fiction, The Gulf Coast Teachers of Creative Writing Award, Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers, and a grant from The Astraea Foundation. She has been a finalist for the Faulkner/Wisdom Prize in short fiction, and her stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, Washington Square, and Greensboro Review.