Charles Johnson Keynote Luncheon

Charles Johnson – novelist, short story writer, and essayist whose balance of philosophy and folklore has been praised since the publication of his first novel in 1974 – gained prominence when his novel Middle Passage won the National Book Award in 1990. Like his other works of fiction, Middle Passage embodies Johnson's controversial version of black literature, defined in his Being and Race: Black Writing since 1970 as "a fiction of increasing artistic and intellectual growth, one that enables us as a people – as a culture – to move from narrow complaint to broad celebration."

Johnson expresses his creative talents in a broad range of artistic forms. In addition to his novels, short works of fiction, essays, and reviews, he has written over 20 screenplays. One of those, entitled Booker, received the international 1985 Prix Jeunesse Award, a Writers Guild Award for outstanding script in the television category of children's shows. Johnson holds the Pollock Professorship for Excellence in English, the first endowed chair in writing at the University of Washington, and is the former director of the University of Washington's creative writing program.