Amanda Johnston learned she would become the 2024 Texas poet laureate via an afternoon cell phone call on an otherwise typical workday in her home office. She’d been told that she was among 10 finalists, but she’d forsworn any hope of victory.
After all, in the 92 years since Texas first bestowed that honorific, no other Black woman had ever made the cut. She sat stunned at her familiar writing table surrounded by shelves of her favorite books. She immediately phoned her husband, her partner in all things. He swore in surprise.
“You did it,” he said. “You are part of history.” Next, she called her mama, the woman who’d long ago, in 1981, brought her girl to Austin, making Johnston a Texan.
