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