Background

John Herndon was born on August 27, 1954, in Baytown, Texas, United States. He is a son of an engineer Thomas Raymond and a homemaker Tommie Jo (maiden name, Moon) Herndon.

Education

John Herndon attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976 and a Master of Arts in 1980.

Career

John Herndon has worked as a cowboy, cab driver, library clerk, and construction worker. From 1982 he has been an adjunct professor of fine arts and communication at Austin Community College, Austin, Texas, United States.

From 1984 to 1997 he worked at Austin American-State smart, as a media critic, book editor, and culture and environment reporter. In 1997 he was a co-founder of Eco-Tropic Books and program host and producer at KJFK-FM Radio. He was a program host and producer at KUT-FM Radio in 1997-1998. Since 1997 he has been a host and performer at television poetry program Texas Nafas. He is also a media consultant at KLRU-TV. He is also co-founder and member of the board of directors in Open Theater.

Achievements

• John Herndon has published five books of poetry. His first novel, One Too Many, was published in 2016. Frame Switch, a feature-length experimental thriller based on his screenplay, was in festival release in 2016.

Works

More photos

• book

  • One Too Many

    (One Too Many is a crime novel, a love story, and a psycho...)

    2016

• movie

  • Frame Switch

    (After a devastating urban wildfire kills her boss, audito...)

    2016

Religion

In the interview to Contemporary Authors, Herndon described his religious views as "independent shamanistic, taoist, buddhist-leaning."

Politics

John Herndon described himself as “Eco-radical.”

Views

Quotations: "I write from a sense that the ongoing and worsening worldwide ecocultural catastrophe will not be reversed or even slowed by technological fixes, but only by cultural change, and further that poetry and literature are the most powerful forces for cultural change. I have written wilderness poems that lament or celebrate the presence of civilized humans in the back country; urban poems that take note of the wild nature in the city, the spider web in the corner, the grass in the crack of the sidewalk; and poems set in the garden, where nature and culture can dwell in productive harmony, but where we humans also play out our self-absorbed dramas."

“Growing up along the petrochemically intoxicated coast of Texas, among bayous, rice farms and refineries, ocean beaches, back bays, the Big Thicket, oil fields, and auto-driven sprawl, I formed a deep impression that the world was already walked-over and despoiled. In my youth and early adulthood, I discovered poets and writers who shared my love of nature and distrust of humanity in the aggregate - from Horace to Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Thoreau, Whitman, Melville, Wang Wei, Ezra Pound, Gary Snyder, Edward Dorn - whose example has encouraged both my lyrical and satirical impulses."

"For me, writing is a meditation which integrates the many divergent paths of my life. I have been a teacher and journalist, a father and a son, a husband and brother and sometimes a lone wolf. Like Frost, I have sought ‘to unite my avocation and my vocation as my two eyes make one in sight."

Membership

John Herndon was a member of Adjunct Faculty Association (president of local chapter, 1993, 1998-2000).

• 

  president of local chapter, 1993, 1998-2000

  Adjunct Faculty Association , United States

Interests

• organic gardening, “wildcrafting,” birding, natural history

• Writers

  Horace,William Wordsworth, William Shakespeare, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Wang Wei, Ezra Pound, Gary Snyder, Edward Dorn

• Sport & Clubs

  hiking, mountain climbing, river-running, camping

• Music & Bands

  folk music, guitar, mandolin

Connections

John Herndon married a Web site designer and educator Susanna Wong, June 4, 1979. They have two children: Thomas Raymond and Henry Adam.

Father:

Thomas Raymond Herndon

Mother:

Tommie Jo (Moon) Herndon

ex-spouse:

Susanna Wong Herndon

Son:

Thomas Raymond

Son:

Henry Adam Herndon

Friend:

Edwin E. Brochin

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vol. 194
  2010
• John Herndon | Facebook