SOURCE: Johnson, Charles, and Rob Trucks. “A Conversation with Charles Johnson.” TriQuarterly 107-108 (winter-summer 2000): 537-60.

In the following interview, Johnson discusses how he researches and writes his works of historical fiction, including Middle Passage and Dreamer.

Novelist, short story writer, essayist, screenwriter, and cartoonist Charles Johnson received both his bachelor's degree in journalism and his master's in philosophy from Southern Illinois University before studying with the legendary John Gardner at SUNY-Stony Brook. Johnson has published two books of cartoons, a book-length essay entitled Being and Race: Black Writing since 1970, and serves as coeditor for a collection of essays, Black Men Speaking. His published fiction includes Faith and the Good Thing, Oxherding Tale, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and Middle Passage, a novel which garnered the National Book Award, making him the first African-American male to capture the prize since Ralph Ellison won for Invisible Man in 1953.

Johnson is currently the...