Denis Hale Johnson (July 1, 1949 – May 24, 2017) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet. He is perhaps best known for his debut short story collection, Jesus' Son (1992). His most successful novel, Tree of Smoke (2007), won the National Book Award for Fiction. Johnson was twice shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Altogether, Johnson was the author of nine novels, one novella, two books of short stories, three collections of poetry, two collections of plays, and one book of reportage. His final work, a book of short stories titled The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, was published posthumously in 2018. Ted Geltner's biography of the writer, Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures, appeared in late 2025.
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Early years
Denis Johnson was born on July 1, 1949, in Munich, West Germany. Growing up, he also lived in the Philippines, Japan, and the suburbs of Washington, D.C. His father, Alfred Johnson, worked for the State Department as a liaison between the USIA and the CIA. His mother, the former Vera Louise Childress, was a homemaker. He earned a B.A. in English (in 1971) from the University of Iowa and an M.F.A. (in 1974) from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he also returned to teach. While at the Writers' Workshop, Johnson took classes from Raymond Carver.
Career
Johnson published his first book, a collection of poetry titled The Man Among Seals, in 1969 at the age of 19. He earned a measure of acclaim with the publication of his first novel, Angels, in 1983. In 1979, the Arizona Commission on the Arts and Humanities awarded him a fellowship, and he taught creative writing at the state prison in Florence, Arizona, from 1979 to 1981. This life-changing experience, in particular his work with two death-row inmates, impelled Johnson to finish Angels, a novel he had started years before.
The Stars at Noon (1986), a spy thriller, follows an unnamed American woman during the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1984. It was adapted into the 2022 film Stars at Noon by director Claire Denis, starring Joe Alwyn and Margaret Qualley.
Tree of Smoke won the 2007 National Book Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It takes place during the Vietnam War, spanning the years 1963–70, with a coda set in 1983. In the novel, we learn the history of Bill Houston, a main character in Johnson's first novel Angels, the latter novel set in the early 1980s.
Johnson came to prominence in 1992 with the short story collection Jesus' Son, which included vignettes originally published in The New Yorker, inspired by Isaac Babel's book Red Cavalry. The first story "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" was published in The Paris Review. In a 2006 New York Times Book Review poll, Jesus' Son was voted one of the best works of American fiction published in the last 25 years. It has been variously described as: seminal, legendary, transcendent, a classic, and a masterpiece. It was adapted into the 1999 film of the same name, which starred Billy Crudup. Johnson has a cameo role in the film as a man who has been stabbed in the eye by his wife.
Train Dreams, originally published as a story in The Paris Review in 2002, was published as a novella in 2011 and was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. However, for the first time since 1977, the Pulitzer board did not award a prize for fiction that year. The novella was adapted into a film with the same title, directed and co-written by Clint Bentley. It premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and was acquired by Netflix to premiere the same year.
Personal life
Johnson was twice divorced and lived with his third wife, Cindy Lee, in Phoenix, Arizona, at the time of his death. They also shared a home in Idaho. Johnson had three children, two of whom he homeschooled; in October 1997, he wrote an article for the website Salon in defense of homeschooling.
For most of his 20s, Johnson was addicted to drugs and alcohol and did not do much writing. In 1978, he moved to his parents' home in Scottsdale, Arizona to sober up and find direction. He stopped drinking alcohol in 1978 and quit recreational drugs in 1983.
In his essay "Bikers for Jesus," Johnson described himself as "a Christian convert, but one of the airy, sophisticated kind."
Death
Johnson died on May 24, 2017, from liver cancer at his home in The Sea
Ranch, a community near Gualala, California, at the age of 67.
Awards and nominations
1981 – National Poetry Series award (selected by Mark Strand), for The Incognito Lounge
1983 – The Frost Place poet in residence
1986 – Guggenheim Fellowship
1986 – Whiting Award
1993 – Lannan Fellowship in Fiction
2002 – Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from The Paris Review, for Train Dreams
2007 – National Book Award, for Tree of Smoke
2008 – Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist, for Tree of Smoke
2012 – Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist, for Train Dreams
2017 – Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction (awarded posthumously)
Works
Novels
Angels (Knopf, 1983) ISBN 9780394532257
Fiskadoro (Knopf, 1985) ISBN 9780394538396
The Stars at Noon (Knopf, 1986) ISBN 9780394538402
Resuscitation of a Hanged Man (Farrar, Straus & Giroux [FSG], 1991) ISBN 9780374249496
Already Dead: A California Gothic (HarperCollins, 1997) ISBN 9780060187378
The Name of the World (Harper, 2000) ISBN 9780060192488
Tree of Smoke (FSG, 2007) ISBN 9780330449205
Nobody Move (FSG, 2009)
Train Dreams (FSG, 2011) – a novella first published in The Paris Review [2002] and in Europe [2004]
The Laughing Monsters (FSG, 2014) ISBN 9780374280598
Short fiction
Jesus' Son (FSG, 1992) ISBN 9780374178925
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden (Penguin/Random House, 2018) ISBN 9780812988635
Poetry
The Man Among the Seals: Poems (Stone Wall Press, 1969) ISBN 9780887486272
Inner Weather (Graywolf Press, 1976)
The Incognito Lounge and Other Poems (Random House, 1982) ISBN 9780394523477
The Veil (Alfred A. Knopf, 1987) ISBN 9780394743431
The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly: Poems Collected and New (Harper Perennial, 1995) ISBN 9780060926960
"Last Night I Dreamed I Was in Mexico" (Ploughshares 36.4, 2010, p. 58)
"The Trees Leaning into One Another, Green and Horrible" (Ploughshares 36.4, 2010, p. 59)
Plays
Hellhound on My Trail: A Drama in Three Parts (2000)
Shoppers: Two Plays (Harper, 2002) ISBN 9780060934408- includes Hellhound on My Trail
Psychos Never Dream, Campo Santo Theater, San Francisco (2004)
Des Moines, San Francisco premiere in October 2007
Des Moines, New York premiere in November 2022
Soul of a Whore and Purvis: Two Plays in Verse (FSG, 2012) ISBN 9780374277963
Screenplays
The Prom (1990) (directed by Steven Shainberg)
Hit Me (1996) (directed by Steven Shainberg, adapted from the novel A Swell-Looking Babe by Jim Thompson)
Nonfiction
(contributor) One Man By Himself: Portraits of John Serl (Hard Press, 1995) ISBN 9789110224940
"The Civil War in Hell". Esquire. December 1, 1990. Retrieved July 22, 2017.
"The Militia in Me". Esquire. July 1, 1995. Retrieved July 22, 2017.
"Change your life FOREVER: God's Warriors in the Third Millennium". Salon. March 22, 1996. Archived from the original on August 24, 2000. Retrieved July 22, 2017.
"School is out". Salon. October 1, 1996. Archived from the original on January 20, 2013. Retrieved July 8, 2017.
"Hippies". Paris Review. June 1, 2000. Archived from the original on July 22, 2017. Retrieved July 22, 2017.
"The small boys' unit". Harpers. October 1, 2000. Retrieved July 22, 2017.
Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond (essays) (HarperCollins, 2001) ISBN 9780060187361