About/Contact

Leif Johnson (that’s “LAYF”) is a freelance game journalist whose works have appeared on gaming sites including GameSpy, GameSpot, Gamezebo, GamesRadar, GameTrailers.com, 1UP.com, NOWGamer, and The Escapist. He’s also written video game-related work for American Cowboy magazine. Once a major figure in the cowboy poetry movement of the 1990s, he traveled across North America from Georgia to British Columbia reciting his poetry and working on ranches. Somewhere along the line he got the foolish notion that he needed to go to college, so he went to the University of Texas at Austin where he received a degree in history. He then spent three years at the University of Chicago working on his Ph.D. before realizing that he probably picked the wrong field to spend the rest of his academic career in. So now he writes about video games for a living. True story.

Leif has been playing video games since the days when Pac-Man machines were found in most corner stores, and he spent over two years in the world-class World of Warcraft raiding guild Risen on Alleria. These days, he plays on all major gaming systems, and he’s particularly proud of his “Dalaran University” T-shirt idea, which is now a bestseller on Jinx.com. He’s a textbook Gemini-Cancer for those of you who believe in that kind of thing, and he somehow lucked out by marrying a beautiful, intelligent woman who also enjoys video games and watching reruns of Thundercats.

He also enjoys photography and medieval history, and he wishes George R.R. Martin would release his next book. He and his wife currently live just outside of Chicago, and he hasn’t quit his day job. You can occasionally find his work under his full name, “Jeremiah Leif Johnson.”

Want to get in touch with him? Send him an e-mail at jeremiahleifjohnson-at-gmail.com.

Writing Samples: