Marie K Johnston (aka Kristen M McCurry) is a novelist, poet, visual artist and website creator. She is a 42 year old married mother of one living in a little arty town just northwest of Houston, TX. She was educated at The University of Texas at Austin and Cornell University and was accepted into Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 2000. Marie K Johnston has written/edited for a wide variety of print/online publications and advertising/marketing agencies (including Walmart.com and Rice University’s Web & Print Division), and she taught high school English/tutored UT@Austin students in Liberal Arts subjects for 14 years before she married. She is the author of 2 novels and 3 books of poetry, all of which can be previewed and purchased at http://Amazon.com/author/mariekjohnston and http://www.BooksbyMarieKJohnston.com! She writes local color "faction," taking a journalistic approach to her everyday life in Texas and blending this seamlessly with the style of magic realism (a combination of the real with the surreal) in order to universalize the basic human pursuits of peace and wholeness in a world which seeks to crush even the most resilient of spirits. Johnston's "faction" always reveals the triumph in the struggle, the maturity in riding out the ups and downs of life in order to grow in wisdom and serenity and achieve "success." She is also working to open her own Etsy store, "Boho Art by MKJ," to sell her original "word art," visual art that attempts to inspire viewers to be happier and to achieve their full potential, as well as a wide variety of yet-to-be-revealed decor for the home; a preview of her visual art can be found at http://www.MarieKJohnston.com ("The Fiction and Folk Art of Marie K Johnston"). Johnston is currently working on two writing projects: 1) the publication of her non-fiction essays and journal entries, collected over the past 25 years, which explore the themes of love, loss, marriage, motherhood, pursuing careers in education and art, dealing with mental illness, and coming into one's own, and 2) a third fictionalized narrative dealing primarily with her lifelong battle with Bipolar I with Psychotic Features. Both of these intense projects are due for publication and release in December 2020. View all posts by Marie K Johnston