Johnson, Carla

PERSONAL:

Born in Buchanan, MI; daughter of Harold P. and Helen S. (a seamstress) Jackson; married Roderick S. Johnson, August, 1984 (died, May, 2006); children: Aaron H. Hoffman. Education: Indiana University at South Bend, B.A., 1979; University of Notre Dame, Ph.D., 1988. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Buchanan, MI. Office—22 Madeleva Hall, Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN 46556. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN, assistant professor of English, 1988—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

All-American award, National Scholastic Press Association, 1975, for Analecta; award for historical writing, Phi Alpha Theta, 1978, for thesis, ‘A Glistening Grief, a Golden Sorrow: George and Anne Boleyn"; Sylvia Auxier Trent Award, Pikeville College Press, 1979, for a short story; citation for outstanding academic title, Choice, 2000, for Principles of Advertising: A Global Perspective.

WRITINGS:

(With Monle Lee) Principles of Advertising: A Global Perspective, Haworth Press (New York, NY), 1999, 2nd edition, 2005.

21st Century Feature Writing, Allyn & Bacon (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to books, including Cases in Marketing Management, edited by Bernhardt and Kinnear, Irwin, 1997; Readings and Cases in Integrated Marketing Communications, edited by J. Steven Kelly and Susan K. Jones, Racom, 2005; Seinfeld, Master of Its Domain, edited by David Lavery, Continuum, 2006. Contributor of articles, short stories, and poetry to journals, including Journal of Nonprofit and Public Sector Marketing, Journal of Popular Film and Television, and Social Science Journal. Editor of the literary journal Analecta.

Johnson's advertising book was published in India and Indonesia.

SIDELIGHTS:

Carla Johnson told CA: ‘Before I could even write, I was a storyteller. As a toddler, I drew narrative cartoons and sewed the pages inside cloth covers to make picture books. I grew up in a small town and avidly read the newspaper that came from the nearby city of South Bend, Indiana. The writers whose names appeared in the bylines intrigued me as wondrous creatures who provided daily stories to multitudes of people. Half a century later, I have a body of published works in a variety of genres: poetry, short stories, journalism—arts and entertainment features and celebrity profiles, journal articles, a book on global advertising, and a book about writing feature stories.

"The journalistic, clean style of Ernest Hemingway; the poetry and perspective of Tennessee Williams's powerful plays; the philosophical/political experiments of Milan Kundera and Slavenka Drakulic; everything written by William Shakespeare, especially Hamlet, have all influenced the way I think and the way I live, and therefore the way I write.

"I began by writing short—poetry, short stories, one-act plays, journal articles. Then I had a lot to say, so I began to write books. My published books and a novel in progress (already several inches thick) reflect observations and experiences accumulated over decades.

"My writing process is simple. Characters appear and scenes evolve in my head until the moment of epiphany when they must be written down, sometimes on a scrap of paper as I pull my car over on the shoulder of a road.

"So I tell stories because I must—a command performance."