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Many of his stories are set in the modern South, with familiar Atlanta landmarks as their setting. He received B.A. and M.A. degrees from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and a Ph.D. His dissertation was published as Emily Dickinson: Perception and the Poet’s Quest (1985). He was named Georgia Author of the Year for 1990 and 1997, and his stories have been published in Prize Stories: The O.

Henry Awards (1986) and New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best (1990).

As adults, Janice and Clifford must confront serious personal issues.

In his second novel, Sticky Kisses (2001), Johnson again uses Atlanta as the setting where his characters struggle with the complex rules of society and family in the South. A bit later, another story was reprinted in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards.

The summer I graduated, I began my first novel; several of its chapters were published as short stories in Southwest Review, South Carolina Review, and elsewhere.  I had moved to Atlanta to attend graduate school at Emory University, where I studied American literature and continued to publish stories, in addition to poems and reviews, in an array of literary magazines.  After completing my Ph.D., I embarked on a teaching career, but in retrospect I must admit that writing always came first.  My first collection of stories, Distant Friends, won the Georgia Author of the Year award, as did a third collection, I Am Dangerous.  My first novel, Pagan Babies, was widely and positively reviewed, and was optioned by Miramax Studios (though the film was never made).  A second novel, Sticky Kisses, earned good reviews as well, in addition to “blurbs” from Edmund White and David Ebershoff.

I was thrilled when Regal House decided to publish my third novel, Night Journey, which is my favorite among my twelve books, and I was beyond thrilled when Joyce Carol Oates offered a quote praising the novel.

In addition to fiction, I had published volumes of poetry, biography, and literary criticism along the way.  I had remained an inveterate reader, and have published more than three hundred book reviews in such papers as The New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution; and in such magazines as Yale Review, The Georgia Review and Virginia Quarterly Review.

But genre didn’t seem to matter; what mattered is that I was writing.  (And when not writing, I was reading.)  It has been, and will continue to be, a literary life.  I wouldn’t have chosen any other.