Denis Johnson

This article is about the American writer. For the UK inventor, see Denis Johnson (inventor). For others with similar names, see Dennis Johnson (disambiguation).

Denis Johnson
Born	1949 Munich, West Germany
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	American
Period	1969–present
Genres	Fiction
Influences Leonard Gardner, Saul Bellow, T. S. Eliot, Malcolm Lowry
Influenced Chuck Palahniuk, Scott Snyder

Denis Hale Johnson (born 1949) is an American author who is known for his short-story collection Jesus' Son (1992) and his novel Tree of Smoke (2007), which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. He also writes plays, poetry, and non-fiction. "Train Dreams", a novella originally published in The Paris Review in 2002, was published as a novel in 2011 and was a finalist for that year's Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Biography

Johnson was born in 1949 in Munich, West Germany. He holds an MFA degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he has also returned to teach. He received a Whiting Writer’s Award in 1986 and a Lannan Fellowship in Fiction in 1993.

Johnson came to prominence after the publication of his short story collection Jesus' Son (1992), which was adapted into the 1999 film of the same name, which was named one of the top ten films of the year by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Roger Ebert. Johnson has a cameo role in the film as a man who has been stabbed in the eye by his wife.

Johnson's plays have been produced in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Seattle. He is the Resident Playwright of Campo Santo, the resident theater company at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco.

In 2006 and 2007, Johnson held the Mitte Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.

Personal life

Johnson is twice divorced and lives with his third wife, Cindy Lee, in Arizona and Idaho. Johnson has three children, two of whom he homeschooled; in October 1997 he wrote an article for Salon.com in defense of homeschooling.

Awards

• 1981 – National Poetry Series award, for The Incognito Lounge
• 1983 – The Frost Place poet in residence
• 1986 – Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2002 – Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from The Paris Review, for Train Dreams
• 2007 – National Book Award for Tree of Smoke (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize)

Bibliography

Poetry collections

• The Man Among the Seals: Poems (Stone Wall Press, 1969)
• Inner Weather (Graywolf Press, 1976)
• The Incognito Lounge (Random House, 1982)
• The Veil (Knopf, 1987)
• The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly: Poems Collected and New (HarperCollins, 1995)

Novellas

• Train Dreams (2002, reprinted 2011)

Novels

• Angels (1983)
• Fiskadoro (1985)
• The Stars at Noon (1986)
• Resuscitation of a Hanged Man (1991)
• Already Dead: A California Gothic (1998)
• The Name of the World (2000)
• Train Dreams (2002)
• Tree of Smoke (2007)
• Nobody Move (2009)

Short story collection

• Jesus' Son (1992)

Plays

• Hellhound on My Trail: A Drama in Three Parts (2000)
• Shoppers: Two Plays (2002)
• Soul of a Whore and Purvis: Two Plays in Verse (2012)

Screenplays

• The Prom (1990) (Directed by Steven Shainberg)

Non-fiction

• Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond (essays) (2001)

External links

• Works by or about Denis Johnson in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Homeless and High, a short piece by Denis Johnson from The New Yorker (archived at the Wayback Machine)
• Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco
• KCRW Bookworm Interview