DETROIT, March 1, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- Marygrove College hosts award-winning author Charles Johnson for a reading and book signing on Friday, April 7, 2006, at 8 p.m. in the Madame Cadillac Building. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Charles Johnson is the 18th writer to present his works at the annual Bauder Contemporary American Authors Lecture Series. He is an acclaimed novelist, short story writer, essayist and cartoonist.
Johnson is the author of four novels -- Faith and the Good Thing (1974), Oxherding Tale (1982), Middle Passage (1990) and Dreamer (1998), a fictionalized account of the last year in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- and the short story collections The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1986), Soulcatcher and Other Stories (2001) and Dr. King's Refrigerator: And Other Bedtime Stories (2005). His nonfiction works include Being and Race: Black Writings Since 1970 (1988), Turning the Wheel: Essays on Buddhism and Writing (2003), two collections of comic art, Black Humor (1970) and Half-Past Nation Time (1972), Black Men Speaking (1997), coedited with John McCluskey Jr., and Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery, the companion book for the 1998 PBS series, co-authored with Patricia Smith.
His awards include the 2002 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the Pacific Northwest Writers Association's 2001 Achievement Award "for distinguished professional achievement and for enhancing the stature of Northwest literature;" and in 2000, the Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award from the Corporate Council for the Arts. He is a 1998 MacArthur fellow and winner of the 1990 National Book Award for Middle Passage.
"Charles Johnson is a story teller with a philosopher's intellect and a historian's belief in the power of the past to shape the present. But he is before all else a true storyteller. In his many short stories, he ingeniously braids history, philosophy, and imagination in making postmodern fiction of the highest order." -- American Academy of Arts and Letters
About Dreamer:
"With compelling profundity and power. . . Johnson takes us to a time, one within living memory, when a 'dreamer' among us saw love as our redemptive principle and strongest weapon before he 'died for our collective racial sins.'" -- Andy Solomon, The Boston Globe
A Ph.D. in philosophy, Johnson is the S. Wilson and Grace M. Pollock Endowed Professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle.
For more information, contact Dr. Frank Rashid at frashid@marygrove.edu or 313-927-1448. For sponsorship information, contact Rebecca Sellers at rsellers@marygrove.edu or 313-927-1445.
Marygrove College is a private liberal arts college located at 8425 W. McNichols Rd. in Detroit. More than 1,200 students attend classes in its undergraduate and graduate programs in education, business, human resource management, social justice, social work, science, theater, music, the fine arts and many others. Call 866-313-1927 or visit www.marygrove.edu.
Editor's note: Charles Johnson's photograph is available at www.marygrove.edu/news.
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