Fenton's fourth cover essay for Harper's Magazine, The Future of Queer: A Manifesto, appeared in the January 2018 issue, to an outpouring of support (and a couple of cranks). ...
Remarks, Deep Dish Presentation, Institute for LGBT Studies 16 February 2017 University of Arizona Let's observe a moment of silence for Frederick Douglass, and all those who sacrificed their careers and lives so that we might be here today. Let’s gather them together in this room. A...
Recently published, in Terrain's excellent series of writers responding to the 2017 presidential election: http://www.terrain.org/2016/guest-editorial/letter-to-america-johnson/...
“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” – T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the RockRegardless of what one thinks about the therapeutic potential or lack thereof of psychedelics, the long piece by Michael Pollan in...
Some years back Sarah Cahill, now an accomplished Bay Area pianist, was writing an article for a local paper on elegant and not-so-elegant public restrooms in the Bay Area. She wandered into the Chapel of Chimes, designed in 1926 by Julia Morgan, one of the...
About Dallas Buyers’ Club: Outside Matthew McConaughey’s performance as Ron Woodruff as alternative therapies peddler, the film was pretty thin – a response that’s not surprising from one who lived through those times. Screenwriters Melisa Wallick and Craig Borten take as their template the stock 1950s...
A bass is by disposition and nature a heavy lifter. Think of a jazz trio – there’s always a moment when the pianist and the drummer stand back and let the bass have its solo, but the audience listens politely and waits for it to...
Remarks delivered at the Associated Writing Programs 2012 Conference, Chicago, Illinois, 3 March. Read remarks in PDF format. Life is research; thus, the memoir. Research deepens and enriches memory. I search for prompts, which in turn direct the research, which in its turn sparks memory. I take issue...
Discussant remarks, First Friday presentations, Department of English, University of Arizona 12/2/11 Introduction: Dr. Tilly Warnock, professor emerita, University of Arizona Speakers: Dr. Ron Grant, director, University of Arizona Medical Humanities Program Dr. Rishi Goyal, Ph.D. Professor Fenton Johnson, discussant Recent years have witnessed the rise of scientists writing as Renaissance...
June 2011 The second afternoon of an eight-day silent Zen Buddhist retreat on an island in Puget Sound, I was dive-bombed by a bald eagle. Here are the facts: The retreat center (a rented Christian summer camp, more about that later) has a labyrinth, where the...