Johnny Kovatch is the founder of the Portland, Oregon nonprofit, Unlock the Arts that utilizes expressive writing as a catalyst for personal transformation for incarcerated youth and young adults. He is a recipient of an Established Artist Fellowship in poetry awarded by the California Arts Council. He previously taught expressive writing within six California state prisons. His poetry has appeared in Cholla Needles, The Headlight Review, Barrow Street, Sou'wester, The Los Angeles Review, and Why to These Rocks, an anthology celebrating fifty years of the Community of Writers. His commissioned work appears in PEN America's: The Sentences That Create Us. His novel, 59 Hours, was published by Simon & Schuster.