Charles Johnson, National Book Award author

University of Washington Professor of English Charles Johnson is a scholar of African-American literature, prolific writer of novels and short stories, cartoonist and journalist. A l998 MacArthur fellow and 2002 recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, Johnson is best known as the author of the 1990 National Book Award-winning novel Middle Passage. He was the first African-American male to win this prize since Ralph Ellison won for Invisible Man in 1953. His other novels include Oxherding Tale (awarded the 1983 Washington State Governor’s Award for Literature), Sorcerer’s Apprentice (one of five finalists for the 1987 PEN/Faulkner Award), and Being and Race (winner of 1989 Governor’s Award for Literature).

Johnson is also author or co-author of several other scholarly and creative works including two collections of short stories, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Soulcatcher and Other Stories; and three scholarly and historical texts, Black Men Speaking, Africans in America: America’s Journey through Slavery (co-editor), and King: The Photobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (co-author).

As an artist and humorist, Johnson has published two collections of cartoons, Black Humor and Half-Past Nation Time and has published more than 1,000 drawings in national magazines and other publications. He has also published more than 50 book reviews and has penned a number of screenplays, several of which have been produced for public television.

A former director of the creative writing program at the University of Washington, Johnson currently teaches fiction and holds an endowed chair, the S. Wilson and Grace M. Pollock Professorship for Excellence in English. He is one of 12 authors portrayed in a special series of stamps issued in 1997 by the Inter-Governmental Philatelic Corporation to honor the most influential black authors of the 20th century. In 2003, literary scholars at the annual conference of the American Literature Association in Cambridge, Mass., founded the Charles Johnson Society with the goal of stimulating interest in philosophical fiction, in particular the works of Johnson.

Admission is free. A book signing and refreshments will follow the presentation.

Johnson's appearance is sponsored by Pearson Library, President’s Diversity Council, Office of Multicultural Programs, Center for Equality and Justice, Brothers and Sisters United, English Department, Office of Academic Affairs, and College of Arts and Sciences as part of Black History Month.