She was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, and currently resides in Round Rock/Austin, Texas.

Amanda Johnston received a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine.

She is a Stonecoast MFA faculty member, executive director and founder of Torch Literary Arts,[1] and cofounder of #BlackPoetsSpeakOut.

As an activist with Black Poets Speak Out, a video project consisting of African American poets protesting police misconduct with poetry, she has highlighted racial and social injustice in the United States.

It is a style consisting of five poems written in columns, and read from top to bottom, plus an additional sixth poem that is created by reading all five columns together, left to right, and a seventh poem that is created from italicized words and phrases in the five columns, which are also read left to right.