Patience, Perspective, and the Power of Story: An Interview with Toni Ann Johnson, by Scott LaMascus Interviews [email protected] Mon, 10/16/2023 - 13:46 Storyteller Toni Ann Johnson uses her skills as an actor, playwright, and fiction writer to tell powerful stories of race, reconciliation, and the effects of lingering racism. She is award-winning on stage and screen, most recently with her story collection Light Skin Gone to Waste (University of Georgia Press, 2022), selected for the 2021 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. When I spoke to Johnson in Los Angeles and later by email, we explored the role stories can play in our understanding of truths, including matters many would rather forget. Scott LaMascus: If you were joining the late Flannery O’Connor on her porch in Milledgeville, Georgia, what do you hope she would praise about your stories that were honored with the award named for her? Toni Ann Johnson: I wouldn’t expect Ms. O’Connor to praise my stories. Her racism would likely have prevented her from appreciating their subject matter. In her letters, she wrote: About the Negroes, the kind I don’t like is the philosophizing prophesying pontificating kind, the James Baldwin kind. Very ignorant but never silent. Baldwin can tell us what it feels like to be a Negro in Harlem but he tries to tell us everything else too. O’Connor was put off by James Baldwin’s writing because it dared to stray beyond the... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2023-10-16 18:46:19 UTC ]
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Transworld has acquired a "powerful first novel" by clinical psychologist S L Lewis,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-11-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Publishers are still prepared to pay good money up front for the right books, agents have told... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-10-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A new story from Audrey Niffenegger, the author of The Time Traveler’s Wife, will feature... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-10-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Bulgarian author Miroslav Penkov has won the £15,000 BBC International Short Story Award,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-10-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Hachette companies Orion and Hodder & Stoughton are jointly publishing a new story by... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-10-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Hodder & Stoughton has acquired the memoirs of Eva Schloss, a childhood friend of Anne Frank... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-10-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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J K Rowling chose Little, Brown publisher David Shelley to publish The Casual Vacancy "... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-09-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Fourteen titles have made this year's longlist for the £20,000 Samuel Johnson Prize for... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-09-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Hodder & Stoughton has released a free ebook, No, It's Us Too!, today (11th September)... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-09-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Playboy announces that it is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a 50-interviews-in-50-days ebook series. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-09-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Penguin’s Viking imprint has teamed up with digital developer TradeMobile to create an... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-09-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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David Willetts MP will chair the judges for the 2012 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction, with a... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-08-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Costa has launched a new award for a single, previously unpublished short story, with the winner... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-07-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In a speech at BookExpo America, the author and bookstore owner said Amazon 'wants to kill us.' Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-06-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The latest story from a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer will appear in 140-character chunks. The New Yorker is publishing Jennifer Egan's "Black Box" in installments on Twitter, the New York Observer reports. The tweets, which began yesterd ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2012-05-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Rachael Ray's "The Book of Burgers" could just be this year's burger bible. Here, the Food Network star shares tips on planning a burger bash and what she'd serve at a White House cookout. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-05-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Substance drives engagement. The banner ad is dead. Those have been hot topics of late in the digital media world and continued to be at Internet Week's Digiday Conference on Monday. In front of a near capacity crowd, Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff and Hearst editorial director of the men's... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2012-05-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Just as president Obama comes out in favor of gay marriage, a new book takes a close look at American same sex couples, from Walt Whitman to Greta Garbo to Jasper Johns. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-05-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Rukhsana Yasmin, commissioning editor at The Westbourne Press, has won this year's Kim Scott... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-05-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Next month, the Slate Audio Book Club will discuss Alison Bechdel's Are You My Mother? Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2012-05-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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