DR. CHARLES JOHNSON, a 1998 MacArthur fellow, is the S. Wilson and Grace M. Pollock Endowed Professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle. His fiction includes Faith and the Good Thing, Dreamer, and Middle Passage—for which he won the National Book Award—and two short story collections, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Soulcatcher and Other Stories. His nonfiction books include Turning the Wheel: Essays on Buddhism and Writing, Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970, and two collections of comic art. In 2002 he received the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Seattle.