Faith and the Good Thing

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHARLES JOHNSON was the first black American male since Ralph Ellison to win the National Book Award for fiction, which he received for Middle Passage. His fiction has been much anthologized, and he was named in a survey conducted by the University of Southern California as one of the ten best short-story writers in America. A widely published literary critic, philosopher, cartoonist, essayist, screenwriter, and lecturer, he is one of twelve African American authors honored in an international stamp series celebrating great writers of the twentieth century. Johnson’s alma mater, Southern Illinois University, administers the Charles Johnson Award for Fiction and Poetry, a nationwide competition inaugurated in 1994 for college students. He is currently the Pollock Professor of English at the University of Washington and lives in Seattle.