Entangled Freedom: An Interview with Charles Johnson

On February 18, 2014, Charles Johnson had just returned to Seattle from a Black History Month speaking engagement. For someone who had braved “cold,” “icy,” “snowbound” Ohio and battled a twenty-four-hour virus, he was thoughtful, patient, and gracefully expansive.

Michael Hill: “The Weave” is different from many of your stories. Could you talk about the genesis of this piece?

Charles Johnson: This was one of the fifteen stories that I wrote over a period of fifteen years for a literary event here in Seattle called Bedtime Stories. It’s a yearly fundraiser for Humanities Washington, which was formerly called the Washington Commission for the Humanities. Let me answer your question at length, because the genesis of “The Weave” touches on some of your other questions about my life in Seattle and how I see the craft of writing literary fiction. I was a trustee on the board of Humanities Washington in 1998. They asked me what committee I wanted to be on because every trustee had to serve on a committee. I asked them what committees were available, and director Margaret Ann Bollmeier replied that they were thinking of having authors give a reading to raise money for their literacy programs like “Mother Read/father Read,” which helps adults with literacy problems learn to read right along with their children. That year I had just come off a six-week book tour for my novel Dreamer. So I was tired of reading already published work. So I suggested this: “Why don’t you, the members of the board, give a group of local writers a prompt or a theme and have them create a new work?” Margaret liked that idea. The first year the theme or “seed” was just “bedtime stories,” and I got some friends of mine, like August Wilson, to participate. Over fifteen years, many writers have composed new works for what has become the most exciting, creative, and imaginative literary event every fall in Seattle. Tom Robbins, David Shields, Tess Gallagher, Heather Mchugh, and my former student David Guterson, to name just a few, have participated. The event expanded to Spokane two years ago, and Humanities