Michelle Johnson

Photo by Shevaun Williams

Michelle Johnson is WLT's managing editor. She also teaches legal writing to law students.

March 2018

It Is Solved by Walking: A Conversation with Writer-Flâneuse Kathleen Rooney

photo: joe mazza Kathleen Rooney is the author of eight books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, including the novel O, Democracy! and the novel in poems Robinson Alone. With E...
January 2018

“Treasuring the Tradition of Inspired Resistance”: A Conversation with Maureen Freely

Maureen Freely is currently the president of English PEN and a writer, translator, and the head of the Department of English at the University of Warwick. Freely is the English translator of five n...
September 2017

Browse: The World in Bookshops, Ed. Henry Hitchings

Browse: The World in Bookshops Ed. Henry Hitchings Pushkin Press, 2016 Don’t mistake Browse for a collection of breezy tributes to writers’ favorite bookshops. The essays in this lit...
May 2017

Michelle Johnson’s Summer Reads

As much as Managing Editor Michelle Johnson loves traveling, she also loves returning home. Her summer reading list reflects a similar course this year. Eli...
November 2016

Rotten Row, by Petina Gappah

Petina Gappah Rotten Row Faber & Faber 2016 Petina Gappah’s new collection of stories is named after the street where the criminal courts in Harare sit: Rotten Row, where the powerful...
November 2016

“Always and Everywhere a Book Is Waiting for Me”: A Conversation with Lidija Dimkovska

Lidija Dimkovska. Photo by Tihomir Pinter It’s 1984 and two twelve-year-old sisters are playing a sidewalk game in communist Yugoslavia, only these sisters are unique: they are conjoined twins, joine...
November 2016

Editor’s Note

Pay inequality. Sexual assault on college campuses. International acts of misogynistic violence. Sexism at the orchestra conductor’s podium. These and other headlines persist as World Literature T...
May 2016

Michelle Johnson’s Summer Reads

With two novels and one book of literary miscellany, WLT managing editor Michelle Johnson’s summer reading list is taking shape. Though she’ll no doubt spend many early morni...
November 2015

Editor’s Pick: The Book of Tokyo: A City in Short Fiction

Jim Hinks, Masashi Matsuie & Michael Emmerich, eds. Manchester. Comma Press. 2015. ISBN 9781905583577. This new collection of short stories by Japanese writers, all set in Tokyo,...
November 2014

Editor’s Pick: The Poetry Deal by Diane di Prima

Still writing “on this earthquake fault” in San Francisco, feminist Beat poet Diane di Prima continues to create her revolutionary verse. At eighty, aged out of the thirty-under-thirty and forty-under...
July 2013

Editor’s Pick: Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris

Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris Little, Brown, 2013 In David Sedaris’s new collection, the essays begin with a visit to his Parisian dentist and end with his first colonos...
November 2012

Outstanding Works of Law and Literature You Won’t Find on Every Other List

There’s no disputing the excellence of To Kill a Mockingbird, The Trial, and the other creative works that often appear on best-of law-and-lit lists. But there are many more novels,...
Walking Between WorldsA Conversation with Pireeni Sundaralingam

March 2009 WLT Poet, playwright, and neuroscientist Pireeni Sundaralingam considers how migration defines a person’s identity and art’s ability to build bridges and bre...
Along the Silk Road An Interview with Yo -Yo Ma

July 2006 WLT In 1998 world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma founded the Silk Road Project to explore artistic exchanges and international collaborations along Sil...
September 2011

Outpost Extra: New York City Bookstores

Plan your next excavation of modern world literature through New York City with managing editor Michelle Johnson's definitive list of her favorite New York City bookstores. View New York City Booksto...
September 2011

OUTPOST: NEW YORK CITY

Poets House | Lower Manhattan Just two blocks northwest of Ground Zero is Battery Park City, a quiet pocket of southwest Manhattan running alongside the Hudson River. The Poets House (poetshouse.org)...
September 2011

The Romance and Reality of Paris: A Conversation with Alexander Maksik

Photo by Pascale Brevet Alexander Maksik, who moved to Paris in 2002 to write and teach, is the author of You Deserve Nothing, the first book from Tonga Books, Europa Editions' new imprint...