New England Review

  • Subscribe/Order
  • Back Issues
    • Vol. 43, No. 3 (2022)
    • Vol. 43, No. 2 (2022)
    • Vol. 43, No. 1 (2022)
    • Vol. 42, No. 4 (2021)
    • Vol. 42, No. 3 (2021)
    • Vol. 42, No. 2 (2021)
    • Vol. 42, No. 1 (2021)
    • Vol. 41 (2020)
      • Vol. 41, No. 4 (2020)
      • Vol. 41, No. 3 (2020)
      • Vol. 41, No. 2 (2020)
      • Black Lives Matter
      • Vol. 41, No.1 (2020)
    • Vol. 40 (2019)
      • Vol. 40, No. 4 (2019)
      • Vol. 40, No. 3 (2019)
      • Vol. 40, No. 2 (2019)
      • Vol. 40, No 1 (2019)
    • Vol. 39 (2018)
      • Vol. 39, No. 4 (2018)
      • Vol. 39, No. 3 (2018)
      • Vol. 39, No. 2 (2018)
      • Vol. 39, No. 1 (2018)
    • Vol. 38 (2017)
      • Vol. 38, No. 4 (2017)
      • Vol. 38, No. 3 (2017)
      • Vol.38, No. 2 (2017)
      • Vol. 38, No. 1 (2017)
    • Vol. 37 (2016)
      • Vol. 37, No. 4 (2016)
      • Vol. 37, No. 3 (2016)
      • Vol. 37, No. 2 (2016)
      • Vol. 37, No. 1 (2016)
    • Vol. 36 (2015)
      • Vol. 36, No. 4 (2015)
      • Vol. 36, No. 3 (2015)
      • Vol. 36, No. 2 (2015)
      • Vol. 36, No. 1 (2015)
    • Vol. 35 (2014-2015)
      • Vol. 35, No.1 (2014)
      • Vol. 35, No. 2 (2014)
      • Vol. 35, No. 3 (2014)
      • Vol. 35, No. 4 (2015)
    • Vol. 34 (2013-2014)
      • Vol. 34, No. 1 (2013)
      • Vol. 34, No. 2 (2013)
      • Vol. 34, Nos. 3-4 (2014)
    • Vol. 33 (2012-2013)
      • Vol. 33, No. 1 (2012)
      • Vol. 33, No. 2 (2012)
      • Vol. 33, No. 3 (2012)
      • Vol. 33, No. 4 (2013)
    • Vol. 32 (2011-2012)
      • Vol. 32, No. 1 (2011)
      • Vol. 32, No. 2 (2011)
      • Vol. 32, No. 3 (2011)
      • Vol. 32, No. 4 (2012)
    • Vol. 31 (2010)
      • Vol. 31, No. 1 (2010)
      • Vol. 31, No. 2 (2010)
      • Vol. 31, No. 3 (2010)
      • Vol. 31, No. 4 (2010-2011)
    • Vol. 30 (2009)
      • Vol. 30, No. 1 (2009)
      • Vol. 30, No. 2 (2009)
      • Vol. 30, No. 3 (2009)
      • Vol. 30, No. 4 (2009-2010)
    • Vol. 29 (2008)
      • Vol. 29, No. 1 (2008)
      • Vol. 29, No. 2 (2008)
      • Vol. 29, No. 3 (2008)
      • Vol. 29, No. 4 (2008)
    • Vol. 28 (2007)
      • Vol. 28, No. 1 (2007)
      • Vol. 28, No. 2 (2007)
      • Vol. 28, No. 3 (2007)
      • Vol. 28, No. 4 (2007)
    • Vol. 27 (2006)
      • Vol. 27, No. 1 (2006)
      • Vol. 27, No. 2 (2006)
      • Vol. 27, No. 3 (2006)
      • Vol. 27, No. 4 (2006)
    • Vol. 26 (2005)
      • Vol. 26, No. 1 (2005)
      • Vol. 26, No. 2 (2005)
      • Vol. 26, No. 3 (2005)
      • Vol. 26, No. 4 (2005)
    • Vol. 25 (2004)
      • Vol. 25, Nos. 1-2 (2004)
      • Vol. 25, No. 3 (2004)
      • Vol. 25, No. 4 (2004)
    • Vol. 24 (2003)
      • Vol. 24, No. 1 (2003)
      • Vol. 24, No. 2 (2003)
      • Vol. 24, No. 3 (2003)
      • Vol. 24, No. 4 (2004)
  • About
    • Masthead
    • NER Award Winners
    • Press
    • Award for Emerging Writers
    • Readers and Interns
    • Books by our authors
    • Contact
  • Audio
  • Events
  • Submit

The Alchemy of Art: An Interview with Charles Johnson

Nathaniel G. Nesmith

April 10, 2017

Nonfiction from NER 38.1 (2017)

Charles Johnson has shown exceptional talent in a wide variety of artistic endeavors: cartoonist, novelist, short story writer, essayist, screenwriter, and educator. Johnson, who established an early reputation as a cartoonist, received his undergraduate degree in journalism from Southern Illinois University while working with and under the guidance of novelist John Gardner. He earned a master’s degree in philosophy and a PhD in philosophy and aesthetics from State University of New York–Stony Brook. Johnson joined the faculty at the University of Washington in 1976. In the spring of 2009, Johnson, who had held the S. Wilson and Grace M. Pollock Professorship for Excellence in English and was the former Director of Creative Writing, retired from teaching.

Among his many and varied accomplishments are four novels, Faith and the Good Thing (1974), Oxherding Tale (1982), Middle Passage (1990), and Dreamer (1998); three collections of stories, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1986), Soulcatcher and Other Stories (2001), and Dr. King’s Refrigerator and Other Bedtime Stories (2007); and works of philosophy and criticism such as Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970 (1988), Turning the Wheel: Essays on Buddhism and Writing (2003), and Taming the Ox: Buddhist Stories and Reflections on Politics, Race, Culture, and Spiritual Practice (2014). In addition, as a cartoonist and journalist in the early 1970s, Johnson published more than a thousand drawings in major publications. He has received an international Prix Jeunesse Award and a Writers Guild Award for his PBS drama Booker (Wonderworks, 1985), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1986), two Washington State Governor’s Awards for Literature, the 1990 National Book Award in fiction for Middle Passage, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship (1998), and the Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2002), as well as numerous other awards and several honorary doctorates. His books have been translated into many languages. A public intellectual for several decades, he is a well-respected artist and author whose work integrates literature, spirituality, race, and philosophy. It would be an understatement to say the interview was engaging; Johnson was thoughtful, energized, animated, and bubbling with spontaneity even after three hours of questions. Our conversation took place at the University of Washington on Thursday, May 5, 2016.                                 —NGN

♦

NGN: Let’s start at the beginning. Could you tell us a little bit about growing up in Evanston, Illinois?

CHARLES JOHNSON: I was born in Evanston on April 23, 1948. April 23, they say, is Shakespeare’s birthday. It was a very interesting time to be growing up in Evanston, which was for many people a model community—a very progressive community. I grew up in the shadow of Northwestern University. I went to a high school that had been integrated since at least the 1930s when my mother went there. It wasn’t a paradise, but people used to call Evanston “heavenston.” It was an easy place to grow up for a kid. In elementary school I got praised and patted on the head most in my art classes. I was always just dying to get to art class because those were the classes where I came alive.

NGN: Where did that love of drawing come from?

CHARLES JOHNSON: It’s just a talent I had. One is born with it; it just needs to be developed by a good teacher, although many artists and cartoonists are self-taught. I remember I had a blackboard that my parents gave me for Christmas—a three-legged blackboard. This was before we moved into our first house. We had an apartment, and I would sit in the kitchen with the blackboard and draw. I would get lost in it. By the time I was finished my knees and the floor would be covered with chalk. There would be this little sliver in my hand because I would draw and then erase—draw and then erase, draw and then erase. I would see things in my mind—in my imagination—and projecting them out there on the page or on the blackboard was like a relief. Nobody could see these images in my head, but once the image is on the canvas, there it is for the entire world to see. I remember I would be playing with my friends and all of a sudden an image would come into my mind. I would stop cold. It would be so powerful. I could see it in front of me. Another kid would say, “What’s the matter with Chuck?” And my best friend Kent would say, “Oh, he’s just thinking.” That probably was the beginning for me—a strong visual imagination as a kid.

[read more]

Nathaniel G. Nesmith holds an MFA in playwriting and a PhD in theater from Columbia University. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Marymount Manhattan College, City College of New York, and John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and recently completed his Creating Connections Consortium Postdoctoral Fellowship at Middlebury College. He has published articles in American Theatre, the Dramatist, the Drama Review, the New York Times, Yale Review, African American Review, and other publications.

Subscribe to NER
Buy digital and read it today:
Choose PDF or e-book

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Charles Johnson, Nathaniel G. Nesmith, Nonfiction

Nathaniel G. Nesmith

The Life of a Playwright: An Interview with Steve Carter

July 5, 2016

Nonfiction from NER 37.2

“Crystal Ladder” Linny Freeman 1365 E. Canton Ct. Deerfield, Illinois 60015 United States 847-331-9111 coaledesign@yahoo.comSteve Carter (Horace E. Carter Jr.), also known professionally as steve carter, was born in New York City in 1929. His father was an African-American longshoreman raised in Richmond, Virginia, and his mother was from Trinidad. He graduated from New York City’s High School of Music and Art in 1948 and began his career as a play­wright at the American Community Theatre in 1965, with a production of his short play Terraced Apartment (which would later become the longer play Terraces). His dark comedy, One Last Look, was produced off-off-Broad­way in 1967 before he went on to work for the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC), the leading black theater com­pany during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. In addition to being literary manager/dramaturge, Carter ultimately became responsible for NEC’s Playwrights Workshop. During those same years, NEC produced the first two plays of his “Caribbean trilogy”—Eden (1975) and Nevis Mountain Dew (1978)—which explored Caribbean immigrant fami­lies living in Manhattan.

Carter left NEC in 1981 and became the first playwright-in-residence at the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, where the last of the trilogy, Dame Lorraine (1981), was produced. Other plays produced at the Victory Gardens Theater include House of Shadows (1984), the musical Shoot Me While I’m Happy (1986), and Pecong (1990). Carter also served as playwright-in-residence at George Mason University, and his play Spiele ’36 or the Fourth Medal (1991) had its world premiere at Theater of the First Amendment at George Mason University. Pecong, a Caribbean retelling of Euripides’ Medea, had successive productions at London’s Tricycle Theatre, American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and Newark Symphony Hall.

Carter, who became a Dramatists Guild member in the 1970s, has received many awards for his writ­ing, including the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award. He is also a recipient of honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. In 2001, he received the Living Legend Award at the National Black Theatre Festival.

I originally sat down with Carter at his home in Queens in January 2011 and followed up by phone the follow­ing July; Carter was by then living in Houston, Texas. The third and final part of the interview took place via phone in May 2014.

—NGN

 

[read the interview here]

Nathaniel G. Nesmith holds an MFA in playwriting and a PhD in theater from Columbia University. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Marymount Manhattan College, City College of New York, and John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and recently completed his Creating Connections Consortium Postdoctoral Fellowship at Middlebury College. He has published articles in American Theatre, the Dramatist, Drama Review, the New York Times, Yale Review, African American Review, and other publications.

Linny Coale Freeman is a unique artist and designer of paintings on silk fabrics, painted silk fashion accessories for women, and public art pieces. Her vibrant colors and bold designs take us on unique and magical journeys, creating pathways of light and space. Linny has a BFA in painting from the Kansas City Art Institute, and a BFA in graphic design from Kendall College of Art and Design. She is on the faculty at The Art Center of Highland Park, IL and The Evanston Art Center of Evanston, IL. Please visit Linny’s website at www.coaledesign.com.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Nathaniel G. Nesmith, Nonfiction, Steve Carter


Vol. 43, No. 4

Subscribe

NER Digital

Serhiy Zhadan

Literature & Democracy

Serhiy Zhadan

“That’s the appeal of writing: you treat the world like a potential text, using it as material, setting yourself apart, stepping out.”

Sign up for our newsletter

Click here to join our list and receive occasional news and always-great writing.

categories

Navigation

  • Subscribe/Order
  • Support NER
  • About
  • Advertising
  • Audio
  • Back Issues
  • Emerging Writers Award
  • Events
  • Podcast

ner via email

Stories, poems, essays, and web features delivered to your Inbox.

Categories

Copyright © 2023 · facebook · twitter

 

Loading Comments...