Chandra Grace Johner
Tell us about you and what you are working on right now as a poet.
I’m a Canadian writer who followed her obsession with folklore, fable, and legend to the shores of Asia Minor. After living in Turkey, I returned to Canada and opened a business with my partner in Edmonton, Alberta, where I currently reside. I completed my MLitt in Creative Writing with the University of Glasgow and have taught creative writing to children and veterans. My poetry and non/fiction have appeared in journals such as Fleet, From Glasgow to Saturn, Feral, Livina Press, Midnight Ink, and Sybil, and my debut book, Naked in Turkey, was published in April 2026 by AOS Publishing. I am currently working on assembling my first collection of poetry. In addition to many and varied literary pursuits, I enjoy film, music, and wandering/roaming about with my children.
Tell us about the poetry pieces you sent over.
My work straddles the ambiguous line between prose poetry and flash fiction. I tend to let editors decide for themselves how they want to read it. I seek to write from thresholds and other liminal spaces where identity fractures, reforms, and reveals what has been hiding beneath the surface. My writing largely explores the intersections of place, story, and transformation, tracing how landscapes both internal and external shape a life. I’m drawn to the mythic undercurrents of both ordinary and not-so-ordinary experiences, the unexpected ruptures that open into larger stories, and the tension between rootedness and departure. I try to investigate the emotional architecture of ‘belonging’ and the ongoing process of ‘becoming’. The pieces I’ve shared here all reflect this journey as I’ve experienced it.
