Johnson was born and raised in the
Germantown and
Mount Airy communities in
Philadelphia. His mother is
African-American and his father is
Irish Catholic. Johnson attended
Abington Friends School,
Greene Street Friends School,
West Chester University,
University of Wales, Swansea, and ultimately received his B.A. from
Earlham College. In 1993 he was awarded a
Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Johnson received his
M.F.A. from
Columbia University School of the Arts in 1999. Johnson has taught at
Rutgers University,
Columbia University,
Bard College, and
The Callaloo Journal Writers Retreat. He was a faculty member at the
University of Houston Creative Writing Program. He is currently a professor at the
University of Oregon's Creative Writing Program. Johnson's first novel,
Drop (2000), was a
coming-of-age novel about a self-hating Philadelphian who thinks he has found his escape when he takes a job at a
Brixton-based advertising agency in
London, UK. The work was a
Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection;
Interview magazine named Johnson as a "Writer on the Verge"; and
Drop was listed among "Best Novels of the Year" by
Progressive Magazine. In 2003, Johnson published
Hunting in Harlem (2003), a satire about gentrification in
Harlem and an exploration of belief versus fanaticism.
Hunting in Harlem won the
Zora Neale Hurston/
Richard Wright Legacy Award for Novel of the Year in 2004. Johnson made his first move into the
comics form with the publication of the five-issue
limited series Hellblazer Special: Papa Midnite (
Vertigo 2005), where he took an existing character of the
Hellblazer franchise and created an origin story that strove to offer depth and dignity to a character who was arguably a racial stereotype of the
noble savage. The work was set in 18th-century Manhattan, and was based on the research that Johnson was conducting for his first historical work,
The Great Negro Plot.
The Great Negro Plot is a creative nonfiction that recounts the
New York Slave Insurrection of 1741 and the resultant trial and hysteria. In February 2008,
Vertigo Comics published Johnson's
graphic novel Incognegro, a noir mystery that deals with the issue of
passing and the
lynching past of the American South. The work is illustrated by British artist
Warren Pleece with cover artwork by Stephen John Phillips. From 2006 to 2007, Johnson wrote the blog
Niggerati Manor, which discussed
African-American literature and culture. == Awards ==