Drew Johnson’s grandmother played piano to accompany the silent films showing at her father’s theater in Pearl City, Hawaii, in the 1920s. Johnson’s other grandfather managed the Rialto — a B-movie theater in Danville, Virginia — in the ’40s and ’50s: monster movies, live performers, barbecue. In his own lifetime, Drew has spent some hours staring at the screen. His fiction has appeared in Harper’s, The Literary Review, VQR, New England Review, The Cupboard, and elsewhere. His essays and other writing have appeared or are forthcoming at The Literary Hub, The Paris Review Daily, The Cincinnati Review, The Believer, Bookslut, and elsewhere. He lives in Williamsburg, Massachusetts — by way of Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, and Florida.
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLES
The Generic Spectacular
Drew Johnson interviews Jim Shepard about his new book of film criticism, "The Tunnel at the End of the Light."...
The Ephemeral Real, Part VI
The final installment in our series "The Ephemeral Real," a meditation on art and reality....
The Ephemeral Real, Part V
Part V in a series on The Ephemeral Real, a meditation on cinema and history....
The Ephemeral Real, Part IV
Sometimes a fragment of the real lasts long enough to make it into more than one film....
The Ephemeral Real, Part III: Get Carter
Get Carter: the ephemeral real and industry....
The Ephemeral Real, Part II: The Passenger
The ephemeral real and real film, real murder....
The Ephemeral Real, Part I
a boat on its side in the water, removed from the Italian coastline last month … in a film, "The Great Beauty," forever. This is the first article in a series of six....
