Denis Johnson was born in Munich, Germany in 1949. He was raised in many countries throughout the world before attending college at the University of Iowa. Along with writing several volumes of poetry, Johnson has written short stories for The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Paris Review, and Best American Short Stories. He has written the novels Resuscitation of a Hanged Man and Already Dead. Johnson was the recipient of an Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and the Robert Frost Award. Johnson has also received fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Whiting Foundation. His novel, Tree of Smoke (2007), won the U.S.… National Book Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Johnson's novel, Train Dreams (2012) received a Pulitzer Prize nomination.