Authors

Charles Johnson

Dr. Charles Johnson is a professor emeritus at the University of Washington and author of 23 books. He is a novelist, philosopher, essayist, literary scholar, short story writer, cartoonist, illustrator, and an author of children’s literature, screenplays, and teleplays. A MacArthur Fellow, Johnson has received a 2002 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, a 1990 National Book Award for his novel Middle Passage, a 1985 Writers Guild Award for his PBS teleplay Booker, the 2016 W. E. B. Du Bois Award at the National Black Writers Conference, and many others. The Charles Johnson Society at the American Literature Association was founded in 2003. In November 2016, Pegasus Theater in Chicago debuted its play adaptation of Middle Passage, titled Rutherford’s Travels. Johnson’s recent publications include The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling (Scribner, 2016) and his fourth short story collection, Night Hawks (Scribner, 2018). He lives in Seattle.