Bret Anthony Johnston
Encyclopedia
Bret Anthony Johnston is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 best known for his multi-award winning debut story collection, Corpus Christi: Stories. He is also the editor of the bestselling Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer.

Career

Bret Anthony Johnston is the author of the internationally acclaimed Corpus Christi: Stories (Random House, 2004). Named a Best Book of the Year by The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

 of London and The Irish Times
The Irish Times
The Irish Times is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Kevin O'Sullivan who succeeded Geraldine Kennedy in 2011; the deputy editor is Paul O'Neill. The Irish Times is considered to be Ireland's newspaper of record, and is published every day except Sundays...

, the collection has received the Southern Review
Southern Review
The Southern Review, a literary journal co-founded in 1935 by Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks and located on the campus of Louisiana State University, publishes fiction, poetry, critical essays, interviews, book reviews, and excerpts from novels in progress by established and emerging writers...

s Annual Short Fiction Award, the Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, the Texas Institute of Letters' Debut Fiction Award, the Christopher Isherwood Prize, the James Michener Fellowship, and was shortlisted for Ireland's Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, "the richest short story prize in the world."

His work appears in magazines such as Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...

, The Paris Review, Oxford American
Oxford American
The Oxford American is an American quarterly literary magazine "dedicated to featuring the very best in Southern writing while documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South."-First publication:...

, and Tin House
Tin House
Tin House is an American literary magazine and book publisher based in Portland, Oregon and New York City. The Tin House magazine was conceived in the summer of 1998 by Portland publisher Win McCormack. He envisioned a journal that would be graphically appealing and free of the stale substance...

, and in anthologies such as New Stories from the South: The Year's Best 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, and 2010, Best American Short Stories, and Prize Stories: the O. Henry Awards. He is a graduate of Miami University
Miami University
Miami University is a coeducational public research university located in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809, it is the 10th oldest public university in the United States and the second oldest university in Ohio, founded four years after Ohio University. In its 2012 edition, U.S...

 and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

 Literature Fellowship. He has written essays for The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...

, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, Slate.com and NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...

's All Things Considered
All Things Considered
All Things Considered is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio. It was the first news program on NPR, and is broadcast live worldwide through several outlets...

, and he’s been a skateboarder for almost twenty years.

In 2006, the National Book Foundation
National Book Foundation
The National Book Foundation, founded in 1989, is an American nonprofit literary organization established "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America." It achieves this through sponsoring the National Book Award, as well as the medal for Distinguished Contribution to American...

 honored him with a National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...

 for writers under 35.

Currently, he is Director of Creative Writing at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

.

Works

  • Corpus Christi: Stories, (2004)
  • Naming the World And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer, (editor) (2008)

Trivia

  • In 2007, Johnston was named one of Harvard University's "Eight Hottest Braniacs"
  • In 2009, a villain in the Hardy Boys novel X-Plosion, by Franklin W. Dixon, was named after Johnston
  • In 2009, Johnston was inducted as an honorary member of the Harvard Lampoon
    Harvard Lampoon
    The Harvard Lampoon is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876 at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.-Overview:Published since 1876, The Harvard Lampoon is the world's longest continually published humor magazine. It is also the second longest-running English-language humor...

    .

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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