To continue the second day of WCU’s Spring Literary Festival, following up Lauren K. Alleyne and Denton Loving will be fiction and nonfiction writer Bret Anthony Johnston.
Bret Anthony Johnston, author of best-selling novel “Remember Me Like This”
Photo from Google Images
Johnston will be appearing in the UC Theater on Tuesday, April 5, at 4 p.m. where he will be reading from a few of his books including Remember Me Like This, Corpus Chrisi: Stories, and he will be speaking about his workbook for creative writers titled Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer.
Johnston is a graduate of Miami University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; he’s the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and a 5 Under 35 honor from the National Book Foundation. He wrote the documentary film Waiting for Lightning, which was released in theaters around the world by Samuel Goldwyn Films. He teaches in the Bennington Writing Seminars and at Harvard University, where he is the Director of Creative Writing.
Johnston is the author of the internationally best-selling novel Remember Me Like This, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and the winner of the 2015 McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns Prize. The book has been translated all around the world and is being made into a major motion picture. Johnston is also the author of the award-winning Corpus Christi: Stories, which was named a Best Book of the Year by The Independent (London) and The Irish Times, and the editor of Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. His work appears in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, The Paris Review, Glimmer Train Stories, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere.
Best-selling novel “Remember Me Like This” by Bret Anthony Johnston
Photo from Google Images
He has been awarded many prestigious honors including the Pushcart Prize, the Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, the Stephen Turner Award, the Cohen Prize, a James Michener Fellowship, the Kay Cattarulla Prize for short fiction, and many more. His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Tin House, The Best American Sports Writing, and on NPR’s All Things Considered.
In an interview with J. Rentilly, Johnston was asked if he had grown up in a household full of readers/writers, and what his first experiences were with writing.
“My parents were voracious readers, so I was always surrounded by books, and I’ve always wanted to be surrounded by books. I’ve never wanted expensive cars or mansions or yachts, but I’ve always wanted a huge library, one that I know I’ll never be able to finish reading. Still, I never thought that any of the books I’d surround myself with would be ones I’d written. I enjoyed writing, though; I enjoyed the challenge of making a part of imagination real, believable,” Johnston said.
