Walter Johnson
Contributor
Walter Johnson is author of The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States, Soul by Soul: Life Inside in the Antebellum Slave Market, and River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Mississippi Valley’s Cotton Kingdom. His autobiographical essay, “Guns in the Family,” was included the 2019 edition of Best American Essays; it was originally published in the Boston Review, of which Johnson is a contributing editor. In addition to prizes for each of his books, Johnson has been awarded fellowships from the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan University, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Studies at Stanford, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the Radcliffe Institute. He is a member of the advisory board of the City of St. Louis Reparations Commission, and a founding member of the Commonwealth Project, which brings together academics, artists, and activists in an effort to imagine, foster, and support social change, beginning in St. Louis. He grew up in Columbia, Missouri.
