Charles Richard Johnson was born in Evanston, Illinois, on April 23, 1948. Johnson graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism from Southern Illinois University in 1971. While attending college, he worked as a journalist and cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune. In 1973, he completed a master's degree in philosophy from Southern Illinois University. During his graduate study, Johnson began writing fiction under the mentorship of the novelist John Gardner, who taught creative writing at Southern Illinois University. From 1973 to 1976, Johnson attended graduate school in philosophy at State University of New York at Stony Brook, but left before completing his Ph.D. Since 1976, he has taught as a professor of English, in creative writing, at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.

Johnson was twenty-six years old and had written six unpublished novels by 1974, when his seventh novel, Faith and the Good Thing, was his first to be published. His next...