Kirk Wallace Johnson is the founder of the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies, and the author of To Be a Friend is Fatal: the Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind, The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, and The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast.
His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Policy.
Prior to the List Project, Johnson served in Iraq with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Baghdad and then Fallujah as the Agency’s first coordinator for reconstruction in the war-torn city.
He is a Visiting Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, and the recipient of fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin, Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Wurlitzer Foundation. Prior to his work in Iraq, he conducted research on political Islamism as a Fulbright Scholar in Egypt. Johnson received his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 2002.
Born and raised in West Chicago, he lives with his wife in Los Angeles.
