Essays
Read essays by Fenton Johnson on the following topics:
Cultural Commentary
The Future of Queer: A Manifesto
Harper’s Magazine, cover essay, January 2018
On Shakespeare’s King Lear
Still, April 2016
Going It Alone: The Dignity and Challenge of Solitude
Harper’s Magazine, April 2015
Power and Obedience: Restoring Pacifism to American Politics
Appalachian Heritage, Winter 2014
Burning Man, Desire, and the Culture of Empire
Tikkun, Summer 2012
Death into Life
The New York Times, December 24, 1994
Gold in Them Thar Hillbillies
The Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2003
In Fearful Times, We Must Embrace Risk
The Los Angeles Times, March 21, 2004
Invitation to the Dance
Out Magazine, August/September 1993
Mastering Technology: Beyond Machine Dreams
The American Voice, Winter 1986
Reinventing Marriage
Gay Men at the Millennium (Jeremy P. Tarchner/Putnam), 1997
Safe Sex
Mother Jones, September/October 1992
Faith and Spirit
Beyond Belief: A Skeptic Searches for an American Faith
Harper’s Magazine, September 1998
Catholic in the South: Confessions of a Convert’s Son
The Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 1990
Gays Help Reclaim Jesus’ Words
The Los Angeles Times, July 29, 2003
God, Gays, and the Geography of Desire
Wrestling with the Angel (Riverhead Books), 1998
Light in August
The Louisville Review, Fall 2014
Pilgrimage to the Magdalen
Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments, Spring/Summer 2012
Literary Journalism
Aftershock in San Francisco
The New York Times Magazine, June 17, 1990
In the Fields of King Coal
The New York Times Magazine, November 22, 1992
On Writers and Writing
On Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis
50 Gay-Lesbian Books Everyone Must Read (Alyson Books), 2009
Ordinary Acts
The Writer’s Journal: 40 Contemporary Authors and Their Journals (Delta Trade Paperbacks), 1997