11 Facts About Mat Johnson

Mat Johnson's mother is African-American and his father is Irish Catholic.

Mat Johnson has taught at Rutgers University, Columbia University, Bard College, and The Callaloo Journal Writers Retreat.

Mat Johnson was a faculty member at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

Mat Johnson is currently a professor at the University of Oregon's Creative Writing Program.

Mat Johnson's first novel, Drop, was a coming-of-age novel about a self-hating Philadelphian who thinks he has found his escape when he takes a job at a Brixton-based advertising agency in London, UK.

In 2003, Mat Johnson published Hunting in Harlem, a satire about gentrification in Harlem and an exploration of belief versus fanaticism.

Mat Johnson made his first move into the comics form with the publication of the five-issue limited series Hellblazer Special: Papa Midnite, where he took an existing character of the Hellblazer franchise and created an origin story that strove to offer depth and dignity to a character who was arguably a racial stereotype of the noble savage.

The work was set in 18th-century Manhattan, and was based on the research that Mat Johnson was conducting for his first historical work, The Great Negro Plot.

From 2006 to 2007, Mat Johnson wrote the blog Niggerati Manor, which discussed African-American literature and culture.

Mat Johnson was named a 2007 USA James Baldwin Fellow and awarded a $50,000 grant by United States Artists, a public charity that supports and promotes the work of American artists.

On September 21,2011, Mat Johnson was awarded the Dos Passos Prize for Literature for his body of work focused on American themes and the human experience.