Married writers Deborah Ann Percy and Arnold
Johnston live in Kalamazoo and South Haven, Mich. Their individually and
collaboratively written plays have had more than 300 productions and readings
on stage, screen and radio, won numerous awards and been published in numerous
publications across the country and internationally. They’ve written,
co-written, edited and translated 20 books. Their award-winning poetry,
fiction, nonfiction and translations have appeared widely in literary journals
and anthologies. Percy’s two collections of short fiction are Cool Front: Stories from Lake Michigan
and Invisible Traffic. Her latest
projects are a fiction collection, Stepping Off Into Space, and two
short novels, A Second Opinion and So She Said. Johnston’s books
include two novels, Swept Away and The Witching Voice: A Novel from the Life of
Robert Burns, as well as four collections of poems, Sonnets: Signs and
Portents, What the Earth Taught Us, The Infernal Now and Where
We’re Going, Where We’ve Been. His translations of Jacques Brel’s songs
have appeared in numerous musical revues nationwide and on Brel’s CD, Jacques Brel: I’m Here!. After a distinguished
administrative career in the Kalamazoo Public Schools, Percy is now a full-time
writer, as is Johnston, who chaired the English department (1997-2007) at
Western Michigan University and taught there for many years as co-founder of
the creative writing program and founder of the playwriting program. They are
members of the Dramatists Guild, the Associated Writing Programs, Poets &
Writers and the American Literary Translators Association.
