(Born Joyce Glassman) American novelist, autobiographer, and nonfiction writer.
Johnson was Jack Kerouac’s lover during the period when he wrote On the Road, and in her memoir Minor Characters (1983) she recounts her life as a member of Kerouac’s social circle. Her autobiography earned a National Book Critics Circle Award and was hailed as a compelling remembrance of the Beat Generation. During her time with Kerouac, Johnson worked as a secretary while writing her first novel, although her literary aspirations were greatly overshadowed by the notoriety of her famous lover. Since the 1960s she has worked as an editor, written a number of well-received works of fiction and nonfiction, and published a collection of her correspondence with Kerouac in Door Wide Open (2000).
Johnson was born in New York City in 1935 to Daniel and Rosalind Glassman. Her family was middle class and conservative, and Johnson led a relatively sheltered life. As a teenager, however, she developed a fascination with artists and radicals, and would sneak away from home to spend time in New York’s Greenwich Village. This interest continued during her four years at Columbia University, and she soon became involved with a group of former students from the university who were at the center of the Beat movement.
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