She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Massey University, New Zealand, examining how elliptical-style poets assert and locate meaning in their work. She was the 2019 Mark Strand Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in Tennessee, a fellow at the Fall Residency of the International Writers’ Program at the University of Iowa in 2015, and the Visiting Artist at Massey University, Palmerston North in 2012.  Johanna was the winner of the New Zealand Poetry Society International Competition (2010) and the Victoria University Story Inc. Prize for Poetry (2005), and a finalist in the 2008 Montana New Zealand National Book Awards .

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Aitchison’s poetry has been published in anthologies, including Best Small Fictions (2019), Best of Best New Zealand Poems (2011), Manifesto Aotearoa, 101 Political Poems (2017), Best New Zealand Poems (2008 and 2009), the literary journals, Sport, Landfall, Poetry New Zealand Yearbook, and Turbine. Her poetry has also appeared in the North and South and Listener magazines.

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