Charles Johnson

Born in Evanston, Illinois, Charles Johnson is a novelist, short story writer, essayist, and cartoonist. He was a published cartoonist by age seventeen, and in 1971 he created, coproduced, and hosted a PBS television series on drawing, Charlie’s Pad. His first novel, Faith and the Good Thing, was published in 1974, and the highly acclaimed Middle Passage won the National Book Award in 1990. Johnson has published other novels, collections of short stories, and books of cartoons, as well as Turning the Wheel: Essays on Buddhism and Writing. A 1998 MacArthur Fellow and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Johnson holds a doctorate from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Washington in Seattle.