Johnny Cordova

Johnny Cordova is a working-class poet and editor from El Cerrito, California. His parents grew up in coal-mining towns along the Purgatory River in southern Colorado and moved to California right before he was born. His father is of Genízaro, Spanish, and Basque ancestry. His mother is Italian.

From 1995 to 2004 Johnny published a number of poems and short stories in small press journals before dropping out of the literary scene. He started writing again in 2021, upon returning from ten years in Southeast Asia. Recent work appears in Chicago Quarterly Review, Louisiana Literature, Moon City Review, Salt Hill Journal, and elsewhere.

Johnny lives at Triveni Ashram, in northern Arizona, where he co-edits Shō Poetry Journal with his wife, poet Dominique Ahkong.