About

Leanne Johnson is an artist, editor, publisher, and educator. She teaches publishing at Simon Fraser University. As well she works independently as a text-based artist. Her text-based work encompasses a broad definition of what publishing is. The texts are intensely edited and deliberately formatted in order to shape the meaning of the work, as well as to allow for several different access points for the readers/viewers. As she creates work and publishes it, she is always considering three questions: Who is the public? How do they encounter the text? And what is it that I want my work to do.

Publishing as “leannej,” her work has been described as “hovering between writing and conceptual art,” and has been displayed in galleries, online, magazines, and books. Her books include Long­Range  Forecast Variable (2002), Re­reading the Riot Act (2011), Staying  Beauty (2013), Monument (2014), The Conference for Animals (2018) and Invasive Species (2019). Her most recent texts explore the form of animated and interactive digital narratives.