Fenton Johnson is an American writer and professor of English and LGBT Studies at the University of Arizona.
Background
Fenton Johnson was born on October 25, 1953 in New Haven, Kentucky, United States, into the family of Patrick D. and Nancy Lee (Hubbard) Johnson. He was born ninth of nine children into a Kentucky whiskey-making family with a strong storytelling tradition.
Education
Fenton received Bachelor of Arts (with honors) at Stanford University, and then he earned Master of Fine Arts at University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Career
Fenton developes his career as a novelist, short fiction writer, essayist, critic, and journalist. In 1975 - 1977 he worked as a legislative assistant and press secretary of U.S. Representative Ron Mazzoli.
Johnson has an active career in writing narration for independent media, including radio, documentaries, and personal films. He has contributed commentaries to National Public Radio and wrote the narration for award-winning documentaries, among them Lourdes Portillo’s "La Ofrenda: Days of the Dead" and the southeast Appalachian cultural center Appalshop’s "Stranger with a Camera", recipient of a Columbia DuPont Award in journalism and best documentary at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.
Johnson has taught in the creative writing programs at San Francisco State University, Columbia University, New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of California-Davis. Currently he is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Arizona and serves on the faculty of Spalding University’s low-residency MFA Program.
Fenton also served as a freelance consultant, writer, and editor, on grantmaking evaluation panels for the Rockefeller Foundation in 1987, National Endowment for the Arts in 1989, and the Knight Foundation in 1993. Moreover, he was a judge at Jackson/Phelan Literary Awards in 1996, and the San Franco Bay Guardian fiction competition in 1988.