Barb Johnson worked as a carpenter in New Orleans for more than twenty years before writing More of This World or Maybe Another.

She won Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers and Washington Square's fiction competition. Her work has appeared in such magazines as Guernica, The Southern Review, 52 Stories, Baltimore Review, and Oxford American, as well as in a number of anthologies, including Don't Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Jobs They Quit, Voices Rising II: More Stories from the Katrina Narrative Project, and The Booklover's Guide to New Orleans. 

Her debut collection of short stories, More of This World or Maybe Another (HarperPerennial, 2009) was an IndieNext pick, a Discover Great New Writers selection, and earned the second place prize at the Barnes & Noble Discover Awards. The book also won the 2011 American Library Association's Barbara Gittings Literature Award.

She lives and writes in New Orleans